2022-10-05

Miss Kim is fighting food insecurity, one piece of tteokbokki at a time

UMMA opens voting, registration pop-up office in Midterms Matter exhibit

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“You can look things up on your phone,” “Don’t forget about side 2 of your ballot” and “You don’t have to vote for everything” are three pieces of advice Ann Arbor residents will see when voting at the pop-up City Clerk’s office at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) this fall. Painted in large block letters on the wall of the Irving Stenn, Jr. Family Gallery, the voting space is just one part of UMMA’s Vote 2022: Midterms Matter exhibit, transforming the museum into a polling and voter registration site from Sept. 27 to Nov. 8. For students living on North Campus, a second pop-up City Clerk’s office will open at the Duderstadt Center on Oct. 12.

The gallery marks the second time UMMA has hosted polling and voter registration, the first being during the 2020 General Election.

was more of a ‘Come on in, this is for you.’”

Briannon Cierpilowski, education program coordinator at UMMA and project manager for the Midterms Matter exhibition, said while voting often seems like an intimidating process to young people who may be disenfranchised by the political system, the gallery urges voters to understand that their voice matters.

“There’s wonderful implications of putting a voting hub in the most prominent, visible gallery in the campus art museum,” Cierpilowski said. “Make (voting) beautiful, make it congratulatory and fun, and, especially for the younger generation, get people interested.”

Voters strolling through the gallery will pass by a floor-toceiling rainbow collage of “I vote” buttons pinned to the wall, built as a backdrop for post-voting photos.

When Ji Hye Kim founded Miss Kim, a Korean restaurant on North Fifth Ave., she had her eyes set on giving back to the Ann Arbor community. Now, with a new sliding scale payment program, Kim is fighting food insecurity, one meal at a time.

The restaurant will be offering its 17 most popular dishes at four different price points ranging from free to 1.5 times the regular price when ordered online and by phone, giving customers the opportunity to pay what they can for their meals. Those who choose the “Pay It Forward” price will be helping to pay for several other people’s meals.

The payment program is being funded by RAISE, High Road Restaurants’ newest grant, which awards $5,000 to grantees and should be self-sustaining with profits from the sliding scale menu.

Kim, chef and managing partner of Miss Kim, told The Michigan Daily that she opted

to use the grant money to fund the sliding scale menu rather than donating a fixed amount of food because she believes it will benefit more people and allow for the program to run for a longer period of time.

“If you cannot afford anything, there is an option for you to get the meal for free, but if you can afford something, then you can get the meal at 50%,” Kim said.

“Our food cost is about 25%, so that means that if somebody pays half, I can feed two more people with that.”

Hannah Uebele, co-President of the University of Michigan chapter of FeelGood, a student organization dedicated to ending global hunger, said she hopes Miss Kim’s generosity will inspire other Ann Arbor restaurants to begin similar programs.

“I’m really excited to see what happens because I think it’ll be a little indicative of the culture that we have in Ann Arbor … I’m really interested to see how many people would take that initiative to (Pay-It-Forward) versus how many people who

tap into a discounted price,” Uebele said. “I think it’s going to be really exciting, especially because, depending on how it turns out, it might inspire some other businesses to take a similar strategy.”

Food insecurity is a prevalent issue across the country and an even bigger issue on the University of Michigan campus. 10.2% of Americans face food insecurity, and, at the University, more than 30% of students struggle to find enough nutritious food every day.

Food insecurity has a disproportionate impact on lowincome communities of Color and has consequences on mental and physical health as well as school and work performance. As people develop health issues and chronic disease due to food insecurity, their medical expenses increase, perpetuating the cyclical relationship between poverty, health and food insecurity.

With U.S. inflation reaching a record high in July — the largest increase in over 40 years — prices of food have increased across the nation. In the past year, food

prices in the state of Michigan have increased by 13.9%.

Uebele said she has witnessed the effects of food insecurity firsthand and said it can have social implications, especially for students. She hopes Miss Kim’s pricing strategy will alleviate students’ social stress when eating out.

“As a University student, so many social events, or going out with friends, center around food,” Uebele said. “If someone’s unable to participate in that or feels the strain of those kinds of events, then this is an excellent way to address that specific concern because (they’ll) be able to go out with friends and not have it be as big of a deal to get their friends to go to somewhere that is affordable to them.”

In an email to The Daily, Kareem Rifai, LSA senior and CSG spokesman, wrote that LSA senior Noah Zimmerman, CSG President, and LSA Senior Jackie Hillman, CSG Vice President, are committed to fighting food insecurity at the University.

Stephanie Rowden and Hannah Smotrich, associate professors at the School of Art & Design, co-founded and co-led the Creative Campus Voting Project, a nonpartisan initiative through the Art & Design School. The project aims to use creative action research to increase college-age voter participation. In collaboration with UMMA, the Ann Arbor City Clerk’s Office and nonpartisan student organizations such as Turn Up Turnout, Rowden and Smotrich spearheaded the initiative to create a pop-up satellite’s office at the UMMA.

Ann Arbor City Clerk Jacqueline Beaudry said although she worked closely with Turn Up Turnout during the March 2020 primary elections to increase student registration at City Hall, the city hoped to find a more convenient spot on campus for students to register and vote for the presidential elections. She said Rowden and Smotrich’s proposal for a clerk’s office at UMMA helped students feel more comfortable navigating the election.

“The lesson for us is that (UMMA) felt really comfortable,” Beaudry said. “If you’re brand new on campus, you’re a freshman, you’ve never voted before or just turned 18, it isn’t a scary bureaucratic experience. It

A do-it-yourself button press is set up near the front door, along with a stand full of free, pre-made buttons for the taking. Students can also pick up a “Know your ballot” miniguide and “Vote Early” laptop stickers designed by Art & Design students before heading into the voting and registration spaces, both of which are designed by Rowden and Smotrich.

“We really thought about all of the graphics that are visible not only inside the space, but outside the space,” Rowden said. “(UMMA) also happens to be in the center of campus and I think there’s something really important about centering this experience in the heart of students’ lives, literally. We’re not telling people to vote in Ann Arbor necessarily. We’re just explaining what’s possible for them.”

UMICH Votes — a coalition of U-M-affiliated organizations that support voter engagement on campus, such as UMMA and Turn Up Turnout — employed a number of student fellows to help visitors navigate the exhibit.

Public Policy junior Hannah Jatsch, a UMICH Votes fellow, said her role at the exhibit is to be a nonpartisan resource for those who have questions about the voting process and to encourage students to exercise their right to vote.

The Institute for Research on Women and Gender hosted an event Wednesday to discuss the history of abortion access for University of Michigan students and context surrounding a critical vote this November for reproductive rights. Held in Palmer Commons, the event centered around Rackham student Rianna Johnson-Levy’s report for the History and Women’s and Gender Studies department.

Dean of Students Laura Blake Jones and Christine S. Asidao, associate director of community engagement and outreach for Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), also spoke at the event, describing the current role of the University in providing medical and emotional care support in reproductive services.

Johnson-Levy’s report, titled “Before Roe: The University of Michigan’s Task Force for Problem Pregnancy Counseling”, outlines the history of pregnant people on the University’s campus since Roe v. Wade was first passed in 1973, legalizing abortions in the United States. Johnson-Levy said she was compelled to do her research after the Supreme Court overturned Roe

v. Wade to inform people about what the University could do to support pregnant people in a post-Roe era.

“While abortion is still legal in Michigan, this history is our precedent for the current moment,” Johnson-Levy said. “Before Roe, University of Michigan administrators and staff acted courageously to ensure student access to safe, legal and affordable abortions.”

Johnson-Levy began the discussion of her report by highlighting the Task Force for Problem Pregnancy Counseling, an organization that established campus-wide pregnancy counseling and abortion referral services.

The task force was formed in the years leading up to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and was led by staff members working within the University’s Office of Religious Affairs. The task force was designed to support students in their decisions regarding pregnancies and reproductive rights as well as inform them about available services.

In the few years before the legalization of abortion in 1973, the task force directed students to reproductive health clinics in the state of New York — where abortion was legalized in 1970. JohnsonLevy said the task force played a key

role in assisting patients in finding resources and travel expenses.

“The Office of Religious Affairs would quickly recruit counselors from across the university to join the effort and eventually would collaborate with local social services, organizations, medical clinics and women’s groups in Ann Arbor,” Johnson-Levy said.

Johnson-Levy said the task force originated through the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion (CCS), a similar organization based in New York. CCS saw the issue regarding the illegality of abortion as an issue of inequality, as therapeutic abortions were only accessible to white, rich privileged women.

“Therapeutic hospital abortions were only available for those deemed worthy in cases determined medically necessary by hospital boards,” Johnson-Levy said. “The clergy found through a study that women’s access to therapeutic abortion had more to do with her respectability and the networks she was a part of — whether she was white, rich, privileged and married … This left single women, the poor and women of Color to seek abortions from those operating without oversight or legal approval.”

Content warning: This article contains descriptions of violence against women

Roughly 150 members of the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor Iranian communities gathered on the Diag Saturday for a vigil held in memory of Mahsa Amini, a 22-yearold woman who died on Sept. 16 while in custody of the morality police of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Amini’s death sparked protests against police brutality across Iran and around the world. In Ann Arbor, attendees held photos of Amini, chanted slogans in Farsi, the official language of Iran, and demanded an expansion of Iranian women’s rights.

Amini was arrested in Tehran after being accused of not properly covering her hair with a hijab and was subsequently taken to a “re-education center,” where people are taken if they fail to comply with the Islamic Republic’s rules of modesty. According to Amini’s family, the police mistreated Amini by allegedly beating her, which caused her to fall into a coma and subsequently die.

Thousands of Iranians across several major cities took to the streets after a photo and video of Amini lying unconscious in a hospital bed with

severe injuries began circulating on social media. The protesters are demanding an end to violence against women and to lift the mandate requiring that all women wear hijabs.

As of Sunday, at least 41 people have been killed during the protests.

Saturday in Ann Arbor, a student at the University addressed the crowd, decrying the circumstances surrounding Amini’s death. The student requested to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation from the Iranian government and will be referred to in this article as Alex.

“They murdered her for a piece of cloth around her head,” Alex said.

“This is not moral, and her death was unjust. She was only 22 years old. We

Attendees chalked the names of protestors who lost their lives to this cause on the ground of the Diag and chanted “Jin-Jiyan-Azadi,” which translates to “Women, Life, Freedom.” Revolutionary poems, chants and songs, such as “Yare Dabestanie Man” — translated as “My School Friend” — were played as attendees sang along. Many of the attendees wore masks to protect their identity and asked not to be photographed or interviewed for fear of retaliation from the Iranian government if they were to visit Iran in the future.

are here to stand in solidarity with all the people in Iran protesting.”

students, faculty explore history of abortion access at University

Iranian community members of Ann Arbor host vigil to mourn Mahsa Amini

Legendary drag queens take on Michigan Theater in Stamps Speakers Series

Glamor. Some women define it as classiness and wealth. Other women like “legendary” drag queens Maxi Chanel, Nickki Stevens, Donna Personna and Lady T Tempest feel their most glamorous when they perform in drag, donning sparkly dresses in front of an audience.

The queens met with University of Michigan students from the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design Thursday night at the Michigan Theatre to discuss the history of drag and their personal experiences performing at Detroit’s Gigi’s Cabaret and San Francisco’s Aunt Charlie’s, which are gay bars well known for their role in the drag scene.

The Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series and the Institute for the Humanities presented Legendary Drag Queens: Gigi’s Meets Aunt Charlie’s: A Tale of Drag Scenes & Queens. The program was open to the general public and brought together the four drag queens to tell stories of performing in both bars and around the country.

The queens hailed from both cities and discussed the history of their legacies and drag’s importance to themselves.

Ben Johnson, arts and culture manager for the city of Beverly Hills, California, helped organize the event. Johnson also previously served as the Director of Education and Audience Development at the

University Musical Society. The event was originally planned to take place in January 2022 but was postponed to September due to rising levels of COVID-19 in the Ann Arbor community.

An organist welcomed attendees into the venue before Chrisstina Hamilton, director of the Penny Stamps Speaker Series and Roman Witt Visiting Artist Programs, opened the event.

“We are thrilled to finally have this program in the house, postponed from last January due to Omicron, originally inspired by the Institute for the Humanities exhibition of James Hosking’s project, Beautiful by Night,” Hamilton said.

After Hamilton’s opening remarks, Johnson introduced the queens to the crowd, saying it is important to recognize their work as

activists for transgender rights and to celebrate their world-renowned drag talent, which in itself is a form of activism to the queens.

“We’re all here to recognize and celebrate four living legends within the performing arts field,” Johnson said. “They’re community activists and entertainers. But tonight we celebrate these living legends. Each one represents a lifetime of performance, awards and history.”

Johnson dedicated the event to Jim Toy, a queer activist who was part of the Ann Arbor Gay Liberation Front and was widely believed to be the first openly gay man in the state of Michigan. Toy, who passed away in January, was the founder of what would become the Spectrum Center at the University, a space specifically for the LGBTQ+ community on campus.

“I’m sure (Toy) would be here tonight and he would be thrilled to know that this was happening but his spirit is with us tonight,” Johnson said.

Johnson then spoke about Gigi’s Cabaret, the longest running and most awarded female impersonation venue in Michigan, and Aunt Charlie’s, the last remaining queer and trans-centered cultural space in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.

“As someone who studies Performing Arts for a living (…) it’s always struck me as a unique aesthetic that was the DNA of what it meant to be a performer in the city of Detroit,” Johnson said. “In Detroit, in my mind, it was different. It was more performative, as if the artists are literally performing for their lives, but also adding juicy doses of talent, punk, edge, humor and joy.”

The four queens then walked out in glamorous and sparkling apparel onto the stage, immediately jumping into a performance of Jimmy Barnes and Tina Turner’s song “The Best” under a gleaming disco ball.

After the performance, Maxi Chanel, Nickki Stevens, Donna Personna and Lady T Tempest sat down for a discussion moderated by Johnson, who asked about the queens’ personal lives and how they see themselves as a part of the history of drag. Lady T Tempest spoke to being part of the LGBTQIA+ community in addition to also doing drag.

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Michigan residents can now receive birth control prescriptions directly from local pharmacies, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced in a statement late last month.

According to Whitmer, this change is possible because of a new policy from the state’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA). Pharmacists are now able to prescribe oral contraceptives, patches like Xulane and rings such as Annovera and NuvaRing if a doctor delegates the responsibility to the pharmacist. Previously, people seeking birth control could obtain prescriptions only from licensed physicians.In a press release, Whitmer said expanded access to contraceptives is crucial because of the uncertainty of reproductive rights in Michigan following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. Abortion remains legal in Michigan after a preliminary injunction blocked the enforcement of the state’s 1931 abortion ban, but

this injunction has already been subject to multiple challenges.

“As reproductive freedom is under attack across the nation, we are using every tool in our toolbox here in Michigan to protect women,” Whitmer said. “Access to birth control is critical to a woman’s ability to plan her family and chart her own destiny. We are taking action to guarantee that Michigan women have the right to easily make reproductive health care decisions that are best for them.”

LSA senior Buu-Hac Nguyen is the co-president of the Lunar Doula Support Network, an organization that gives support to those in the midst of stillbirths, miscarriage and abortion in Southeast Michigan.

The organization aims to spread awareness about sexual and reproductive equity, focusing on marginalized communities. Nguyen said while this policy is a slight improvement, it cannot resolve the impact of the overturning of Roe v. Wade alone.

“We think that this ability to prescribe hormonal birth control is a step forward through 100 steps back,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen also said this policy could

help marginalized communities by making birth control more accessible.

“Marginalized communities don’t have access to birth control as easily,” Nguyen said. “With more access to birth control, hopefully it allows them to manage their own reproductive health and well-being, as easy as going to CVS or Walgreens.”

The Affordable Care Act of 2010 mandates that almost all insurance plans cover preventive care, including both over-the-counter and prescribed forms of birth control. Plans sold before the passage of the ACA in 2010 and grandfathered into the Obamacare marketplace are not required to abide by the preventive care mandate and may be exempt from covering the cost of birth control on the basis of religious or moral beliefs.

Currently, 21 states (excluding Michigan) allow pharmacists to prescribe birth control, including California, Colorado, South Carolina and Idaho. A study of California’s policy found patients reported easier access to care and reduced costs, suggesting the new rule was effective in improving patient experiences.

In a statement to The Michigan Daily, Susan Ernst, chief of

gynecology at University Health Services (UHS) highlighted the variety of birth control options currently available to students through UHS.

“University Health Service remains committed to ensuring students can access a range of reproductive and sexual health services, including common forms of contraception,” Ernst said. “Types of birth control that UHS clinicians can help students access include hormonal contraceptives (pill, ring, and patch), injections (DepoProvera), implants (Nexplanon), non-hormonal diaphragms, and multiple forms of both hormonal and non-hormonal intrauterine devices (IUDs).”

Ernst added that UHS plans to continue providing all of these services following this policy change but will also work to increase collaboration with local pharmacies to expand birth control access.

“For decades, UHS clinicians have worked with students to help them choose the birth control option that best fits their needs,” Ernst said. “UHS intends to explore ways to further increase access under the new state guidance.”

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Ross students worry about environmental impact of no-technology policy

Some class policies require physical copies of lecture slides, notes when used in class

number of pages per week, if every business student in the junior class prints lecture slides on double-sided pages for every class, the class will use 17,205 pages every week.

Undergraduate students at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business use a lot of paper.

In several of their classes, business students are required to print out lecture slides, practice problems and notes if they want to use them in class. The Michigan Daily obtained a copy of the lecture slides business juniors have been asked to print out for their core classes thus far this semester, which are released before the start of each class. If the average number of pages per week stays relatively stable, The Daily estimates that by the end of the term the more than 400 students in the third-year BBA cohort will have printed out more than 258,075 pages — the equivalent of 25.8 trees.

Business juniors follow a standard curriculum known as the Ross Integrative Semester (RIS) during which all students take the same four core classes: BCOM 350 (Communication Strategies), BL 300 (Business Law & Ethics), MO 300 (Behavioral Theory in Management) and TO 313 (Operations Management) Every student in the RIS program is given the same set of syllabi and lessons and is advised to print out the same lecture materials.

Business junior Caroline Millen said the number of slides depends on the class. In Business Law and Ethics, she estimates she prints an average of 10 pages per class. In Behavioral Theory in Management, 15 pages, and in Operations Management, 10 pages. Each of these classes meets twice a week.

As of the winter 2022 semester, this year’s junior class in the Business School has an enrollment of 465 students. Based on the average

Still, students say the school constantly impresses upon them the importance of being environmentally conscious in the academic and business worlds.

Millen told The Daily she has been learning about sustainability since the day she started at the Business School two years ago.

Millen is an undergraduate fellow at the Erb Institute — a program that combines Program in the Environment (PitE) classes with business courses offered at the Business School to create a unique curriculum focused on the sustainability of businesses. While her PitE professors talk about the importance of protecting the environment, Millen said, she also often hears about sustainability in her business lectures.

“I’m very passionate about (environmentalism and

sustainability),” Millen said. “I think a lot of us in (the Business School) are, considering (business professors) make such an effort to teach us that in all of our classes.”

According to the Business School spokesperson Bridget Vis, RIS is an active-learning experience for business students, preparing them to navigate complicated business situations. Vis said there are other U-M courses outside of the RIS curriculum that enforce an electronics-free classroom policy as well.

“The Ross Integrative Semester is a signature learning experience with action-based learning opportunities, designed to enhance BBA students’ capacity to analyze complex and pressing business problems using a boundaryless approach,” Vis said. “RIS core courses, like many courses around (the University), have traditionally maintained a largely electronics-free classroom policy to enhance student learning and engagement with their peers and faculty.”

Vis added that the Business School takes pride in its pursuit of sustainability. Vis said the RIS committee discussed whether to keep the electronics policy before the fall 2022 semester, considering sustainability as an important factor in the decision. Ultimately, the committee decided upholding the electronics-free classroom was consistent with RIS goals.

“While sustainability was an important consideration, the committee agreed that maintaining an electronics-free classroom was the best approach for the RIS learning goals this semester,” Vis said. “In cases where electronics will help student learning, faculty will encourage students to bring an electronic device to that specific class session.”

Millen said a group of business students were concerned about the electronics policy’s negative environmental effects and contacted the Business School administration during the first few weeks of the fall 2022 semester. GroupMe messages obtained by The Daily include a poll asking students if they support an option to use tablets to take notes in class. Of 198 respondents, 195 voted “yes.” In an email response to a student query on the matter obtained by The Daily, Business Law Lecturer Lori Rogala said the RIS committee unanimously agreed to keep the electronics policy, adding that the current policy is the most consistent with the goals of RIS..

“During our discussions, the RIS committee weighed several of the concerns … including pedagogical best practices, classroom equity and an inclusive learning environment,” Rogala said. “Our ultimate determination is that the current policy strikes the best balance of competing goals and allowing

widespread electronics usage is not the best vehicle for addressing many of the specific concerns cited.”

The Ross building itself earned Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) silver certification for its sustainable design by the U.S. Green Building Council in 2010, a year after it opened. Jeff T. Blau Hall and Kresge Hall — which are attached to the Ross building and are a part of the business school — earned LEED gold certification in 2017.

LEED certification offers four levels — certified, silver, gold and platinum — and new construction can earn points toward these titles based on the application of a variety of categories. The Ross building earned points in indoor environmental quality, sustainable sites, energy and atmosphere, innovation and design process, materials and resources, and water efficiency. The Kresge and Blau Hall project earned points in each of the prior categories, along with regional priority points, earning them a gold certification.

However, Millen and other students have become concerned by the unsustainable practices they see in their own classrooms.

The RIS syllabus for fall 2022 outlines an electronics policy that strictly prohibits the use of any electronic devices in the classroom for the four core classes. The same policy was in place in RIS classes in fall 2021 as well.

According to Millen, in lieu of digital copies of notes and assignments, professors of the RIS core courses advise students to print lecture presentation slides, as well as problem sets or exercises posted online, and bring them to class.

Millen said many of her classmates and peers have brought

up the issue in classes, asking for a reconsideration of the electronics policy due to the environmental impacts of printing. She said professors typically avoid the question or refuse to negotiate.

“Teachers are really quick to shrug it off and just continue to insist that we print slide decks for their class,” Millen said. “(Professors) reiterate constantly that businesses are the most powerful institutions for change. They always say that, but they’re not really letting us take our own action on that.”

In the first two weeks of the semester, Millen said the MO and TO courses used even more paper for team-building exercises. She said 20 packs of notecards were used in her MO class for a game, and stacks of hundreds of pieces of paper were used in a house-building game in her TO class.

Millen said RIS policies are particularly frustrating because she and the rest of the business junior class were required to read “Management as a Calling: Leading Business, Serving Society” by Andrew Hoffman, U-M Holcim (US), Inc. Professor of Sustainable Enterprise. Millen said the book emphasizes that sustainability practices begin at the individual level. She expressed frustration that the RIS policies allow very little room for sustainable choices.

“(‘Management as a Calling’) stresses that a key point of systematic change, especially environmentally related, starts at the individual level,” Millen said. “I feel like (the Business School) is really preventing us from doing that with this policy. (The Business School) is even amplifying (the problem) by doing it at an organizational level.”

Michigan Medicine nurses union ratifies new contract after six months of negotiations

Agreement includes wage increases, end to mandatory overtime and safer staffing ratios

press release.

Members of the University of Michigan Professional Nurse Council (MNA-UMPNC) have voted “overwhelmingly” to approve a tentative agreement with Michigan Medicine, according to a press release Saturday night. The new four-year contract comes after six months of negotiations. Over 6,000 union members had worked without a contract since the previous agreement expired on June 30.

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Effective immediately, the new contract includes an end to mandatory overtime, a 22.5% wage increase over four years and expanded guidelines for safe staffing ratios. The agreement also provides a $273 million compensation package that covers a new salary step model and a $5,000 bonus for each nurse.

According to a UMPNC tweet, 95% of voting members approved the agreement. The contract will run through March 31, 2026.

Negotiations between the union and the University stalled over the

union’s demands for safe workload ratios as the administration maintained that employee staffing levels were not mandatory subjects of bargaining. In August, the union filed a lawsuit with the Michigan Court of Claims, alleging that the hospital’s administration was violating state law by refusing to bargain over staffing ratios.

According to an MNA spokesperson, both the Court of Claims suit and ULP charge regarding workload ratios will be withdrawn.

In the press release, Renee Curtis, MNA-UMPNC president

and registered nurse, said she was happy with the protections the contract provided for its nurses and patients.

“We’re excited about being able to hold the employer accountable for safe nurse-to-patient ratios and end dangerous mandatory overtime,” Curtis wrote. “Strong wage increases and bonuses will help attract and retain the nurses we need to take care of our patients.”

Anne Jackson, MNA-UMPNC member and registered nurse, expressed her gratitude for the union’s bargaining unit in the same

I’m grateful to our bargaining team for fighting so hard for what nurses and patients need, and I was proud to join my colleagues in voting ‘yes’ on this contract,” Jackson wrote. “This makes the University of Michigan an even better place to work and provide the best patient care possible for all our patients.”

Marschall S. Runge, Michigan Medicine CEO and U-M Medical School dean, said he was satisfied with the contract in a press release from U-M Health, the clinical division of Michigan Medicine.

“We are grateful that our nurses choose to work and build their careers at University of Michigan Health,” Runge wrote. “We are pleased to offer a very competitive package that recognizes the value our nurses bring to our patients and our organization.”

According to the U-M Health release, Michigan Medicine also launched an “aggressive” nurse recruitment program that is expected to hire a record-setting number of nurses this year, with 1,058 nurses hired from July 2021 to May 2022.

Donald Trump rallies for Michigan gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon in Warren

Thousands attend in support of Republican contenders in November general election

Ukraine — it never would have happened if I was president.”

Former U.S. President Donald Trump hosted a “Save America” rally at the Macomb Community College Sports & Expo Center in Warren, Mich. on Oct. 1 to campaign for Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon and other Republican politicians running for election on Nov. 8.

Trump took the stage to speak about his concerns over the security of American elections. Over the course of a nearly two-hour speech, he repeated unfounded claims of voter fraud and asserted that he was the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election.

“Who would have thought our elections are so rigged and broken?” Trump said. “I don’t believe we’ll ever have a fair election again.”

Trump also spoke about the Russian invasion in Ukraine, stating that it was a result of Biden’s administration and claimed the war would have been avoided under Trump’s ‘America First’ policy that prioritized nationalism and isolationism.

“Look at what we’ve been through together,” Trump said. “Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine,

As Trump turned to discussing the impending gubernatorial election, he further criticized Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who is running for reelection this November. Trump spoke on his issues with Whitmer’s policies on COVID-19, crime and abortion before reaffirming his support for Dixon’s campaign.

“(Dixon) will fight for Michigan families like no one has ever fought before,” Trump said. “She’s a great person. We introduced her at my last rally up here, and she took off like a rocket ship.”

Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon also addressed the thousands of attendees Saturday evening, calling attention to the Democrat-funded advertisements targeting Dixon’s anti-abortion stance. Dixon said Whitmer “stretches the truth” because she would not have the power to revoke abortion rights as governor. This decision, Dixon said, will be up to Michigan residents in voting on the Reproductive Freedom

For All ballot initiative set to appear in the upcoming midterm election.

“(Democrats) have spent nearly $23 million going after me,” Dixon said. “You might have seen some of the ads saying that I’m pro-life.

Again, ‘Stretchin’ Gretchen’ is out there saying that I’m going to be able

to do something about that issue in the state. You all know it’s on the ballot, it’s been decided by a judge.”

Abortion rights have become a hot topic for this November’s election after The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, a court case that had previously established a constitutional right to abortion access nationwide. Dixon has said she opposes all abortions, including in cases of rape and incest, except when necessary to save the life of the pregnant person.

In the state of Michigan, abortions are still protected under a preliminary injunction that blocks a 1931 ban on abortions. Michigan voters will decide in the November general election whether to approve the Reproductive Freedom for All amendment, which would codify abortion rights in the state constitution.

Dixon won the Republican primary for governor in August following a last-minute endorsement from Trump on July 29. Dixon defeated four other GOP candidates, receiving 41.5% of the Republican vote in Michigan. Dixon has also been endorsed by the DeVos family, the Police Officers Association of Michigan and the Michigan Chamber of Commerce.

During the primaries, Dixon outraised the other four Republican candidates for governor, and

according to her most recent campaign finance report, she has reached an end balance of just under $524,000. In comparison, Whitmer has an end balance of over $14 million.

Dixon criticized Whitmer for her stance on supporting the “spirit” to defund the police amid increasing attention to police brutality and racial injustice in 2020. In addition, Dixon condemned Whitmer’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, to which the crowd erupted in chants

of ‘lock her up!’ The chant was an echo from Trump’s campaign rallies in 2016, when he ran against Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State and Democratic opponent.

“This is the woman who knelt on the ground with people who held up signs that said ‘Defund the police,’ and then she said she supports the spirit of (defunding) the police,” Dixon said. “Are you going to let her get away with these lies today?

… We are going to protect our law enforcement officers. We are going to

make sure we stand behind our law enforcement officers.”

In her closing remarks, Dixon said she would work toward her campaign promises on public education, crime and economic security.

“We are American, we are Michiganders, no one holds us down,” Dixon said. “We will make sure our schools will be the top schools in the nation. We will make sure that our cities are the safest cities in the country. And we will make sure that businesses are dying to get in here and (for) the businesses that we have, we will help them expand and grow.”

Waterford resident Stephen Dail, student at Anderson University in Indiana, said he attended the rally with his girlfriend and her mother to show support for the Republican candidates running in Michigan. Dail said he supported the Trump administration during his time in office as well as former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s tenure, and hopes to see Dixon elected this November.

“I love obviously what Trump did and our previous governor before — he did a great job,” Dail said. “I think (Dixon) has the potential to be very good and take the state in a good direction because obviously the governor now has done nothing but drag us down.”

Design by Erin Shi

SARAH RAHMAN Senior Arts Editor

Outrage! Scandal! It feels like a part of our nature to be drawn to these emotions, and I have often wondered how guilty I ought to feel for being so enraptured by

other people’s business. There’s an argument to be made for the virtues of gossip; sharing information with others makes me feel closer to them, like we’re both a part of something. The content of gossip allures me as well, like my conversation partner and I are momentary anthropologists, parsing through

‘Bodies Bodies Bodies,’ internet gossip and pseudo-intellectual arts criticism

SERENA IRANI Daily Arts Writer

“ur review was great, maybe if you had gotten ur eyes off my tits you could’ve watched the movie!”

Three lines, 19 words. Poetry, in arguably its finest 21st-century form: Instagram DM. Amandla Stenberg could’ve written Hamlet, but Shakespeare certainly could not have written this. Just a syllable or two short of a haiku, but with clear intention embedded within the distinct stanzas — the innocent opening; the shocking, abrupt twist in line two; the closing sentiment that kills me every time. As a film critic, maybe if she had in fact “watched the movie,” none of this would’ve happened. The real kicker is that she knew exactly how this would play out — she just didn’t know it would backfire quite so gloriously.

Said film critic is Lena Wilson, a writer for the highly esteemed New York Times, maybe you’ve heard of it? Well, prior to a month ago, you definitely had not heard of her. After a scathing review of A24’s comedy-horror flick “Bodies Bodies Bodies,” Wilson took to Twitter in a now deleted post to release this infamous private message from actress Amandla Stenberg, who stars in the film. Shock! Outrage! Inevitable controversy ensued! But let’s get some more context. On its own, Stenberg’s puzzling message doesn’t make much sense, reading like an out-of-theblue, overly-offended response to a critic just trying to do their

job — something that Wilson evidently capitalized on. If you didn’t read her pay-walled review, then you might be unaware of the specific line Stenberg had clearly taken issue with and was directly alluding to: the line in which Wilson called the film “a 95-minute advertisement for cleavage and Charli XCX’s latest single.” Not a good look, to say the least (and to say the most, Charli XCX’s single “Hot Girl” is a bop and she responded to the drama in about the best possible way).

Here’s where things start to get messy. Wilson tweeted that screenshot with the assumption that out of context, the internet would blindly sympathize with her. Wilson, who is gay, framed the DM as a homophobic, petty retaliation from a privileged actress unhappy with a lessthan-stellar review. She acted as if the reason she posted a private message to an extremely public forum was that Stenberg had “more social power” than her, and that it was simply not okay for them to do something like this. The fault in Wilson’s strategy here is that, contrary to how the online public may try to appear, no one is an absolute empath, especially not when it comes to petty celebrity disputes and the lives of the elite. They may seem easily manipulated and often blindly misled, but Wilson had no substantial credibility or established camaraderie with the Twitter masses to inspire them to act on her behalf.

the evidence, analyzing what the information may suggest about the subjects. Both in its exchange between myself and another and our inevitable discussion of others, gossip makes me feel less lonely and more human.

But then of course there are the drawbacks, particularly when we

broaden our scale. Gossip fuels the mob mentality that makes us leave critical thought at the door for a quick emotional high at another’s expense.

It leads us to putting celebrities on pedestals only to ruthlessly tear them off again (ahem, #FreeBritney). There’s an inevitable tie between art and gossip, something that the

writers here on the Arts section are intimately familiar with. As they open their books, enter theaters and attend concerts, they are well aware of the mutable, often reactive culture surrounding the art they consume.

I challenged the Arts writers to reflect on how art interprets gossip and how gossip shapes our

The DeuxMoi Effect

Meet DeuxMoi: the selfproclaimed “curators of pop culture” and the tabloid magazine’s replacement. If you haven’t heard of it, DeuxMoi is an Instagram account known for spilling all the stars’ hottest tea. The account’s owners are still anonymous yet rumored to be fashion designer Meggie Kempner and socialite granddaughter Melissa Lovallo. No matter their identity, they have become a trustworthy source for any and all celebrity gossip with over one million followers.

The account began in 2013 to promote a lifestyle and fashion brand. Everything changed seven years later during the beginning of quarantine in March 2020 when DeuxMoi asked their 45k followers for pop culture tea. People were stuck inside and bored, so gossip and drama were the perfect antidotes. As a result, the account blew up and now has over 1.6 million followers, a podcast, a book and even an HBO series in the works.

DeuxMoi is known for its “blind items” anonymously submitted by its followers through Instagram direct message or its online submission form. Posted to the account’s Instagram story as a

screenshot, the content includes, but is not limited to, couple rumors, stories about celebrity behavior, new projects and even the stars’ coffee orders. Most of the blind items hide the person in question through a code name, while other less serious accusations name the celebrity directly. Being the gatekeeper of such a high volume of gossip is a risky position to occupy, but DeuxMoi acknowledged it with their Instagram bio which says, “statements made on this account have not been independently confirmed. this account does not claim any information published is based in fact.”

In addition to its hot gossip items, DeuxMoi posts celebrity sightings and the places to be seen on its “Sunday Spotted” roundups. From doctors to hairstylists to restaurants and hotels, DeuxMoi knows the hottest destinations.

Whenever I wonder why, in 2022, people still care so much about celebrity culture, I remember the phrase “DeuxMoi made me do it.” It’s what followers write when attributing a meal, beauty product or fun night out to DeuxMoi and its posts. While many of its featured locations come with a hefty price tag and impossible-to-get reservations, DeuxMoi still lets its followers dine, shop and explore like the stars. DeuxMoi is the new

way to be in the know, enabling everyone to feel like they’re included in the celebrity scene.

At its core, DeuxMoi represents a microcosm of internet culture.

Whether or not its followers care about where the celebrities are spotted or what the gossip is, they do care about being a part of a community. Nowhere is this more evident than the account’s new series of posting individuals spotted in DeuxMoi merch — “Deuxmerch”. In addition to submitting Leonardo DiCaprio’s latest 20-year-old conquest, people are snapping pictures of DeuxMoi merch seen worn at the airport or at Trader Joe’s. Once the poster, DeuxMoi’s followers are now the posted. It’s the way to say “Look

interpretation of art. The result? A scandalous, titillating exploration of all the art-related things that makes our jaws drop and eyebrows raise — along with answers to the pressing question of why we do it. Enjoy yourself, and don’t forget to tell a friend.

at me, I know what’s happening, I have the inside scoop.” Sure, it’s cool to be famous — but in the world of DeuxMoi, it’s way cooler to be in the know.

Thanks to DeuxMoi, the everyday person is now paparazzi and every celebrity sighting is a story to tell. Society no longer needs to pay attention to the tabloid magazine in the grocery line to know what’s the hottest new restaurant or the latest celebrity couple. Anyone and everyone can share stories, saturating the media with gossip while also making seemingly unreachable echelons of society more accessible. For better or worse, DeuxMoi has democratized celebrity culture, and it’s here to stay.

Desensitization, entertainment and the role of ‘Normal Gossip’

Inconsequential, potentially made-up gossip from strangers is my preferred entertainment.

In the two days after I discovered the “Normal Gossip” podcast, I listened to 18 episodes (all that was available at the time). I listened while driving. I downloaded episodes to listen to at work. It even replaced my running music. It remains the only podcast for which I have paid a subscription. I needed the bonus episodes that subscribers — called “friends” or “friends of friends” — have access to.

In each episode of “Normal Gossip,” host Kelsey McKinney tells a true gossip story, sent in by a listener, to a guest who has not heard it before. McKinney turns away from dark, ill-humored gossip in favor of light-hearted stories: knitting group gossip, kindergarten soccer parent gossip, coffee shop coworker gossip. The mundanity of the subjects is eradicated by McKinney’s talent for gossipy storytelling, consistent twists and grudges that, while often petty, are deeply identifiable — if you found out that the snobbish rich lady in your knitting group who went viral

for selling “male tears” coasters on Instagram was secretly making them out of the acrylic yarn she looked down on you for using, you would start plotting revenge too. Through this podcast, the listener can experience these moments with the stories’ protagonists.

While waiting for a new episode to release, I did wonder what made this podcast different from a fiction podcast. Narrative podcasts have arguably better stories. “Normal Gossip” has the “this really happened” element, but the stories are heavily anonymized to avoid legal concerns. While McKinney claims an ability to tell when stories are fake, she has admitted on Instagram that even if they do end up with fake gossip, a story is a story.

What even makes gossip compelling at all? It’s something many of us are taught to look down on and avoid. It’s also something undeniably enjoyable. It’s exciting to know things about people, to be trusted with information. In many situations, knowing gossip is a sign of inclusion within a group. It creates a connection between the teller and the receiver. Even if the connection is impersonal, they share classified knowledge. They are in on a secret that others aren’t.

A sense of community can not only

result from gossip — it is part of what makes it valuable in the first place.

As untraceable and inconsequential as the stories on “Normal Gossip” are to the average listener, listening invites them into a group. The stories come from other listeners — other members of that community. Listeners who subscribe can see the podcast’s “close friends” stories on Instagram, where they can send in mini gossip stories in weekly “question box” games and guess what the next episode’s gossip will involve. The stories McKinney and her team choose to tell on the podcast often take place in a niche community themselves. The feeling of secrecy increases. This is something a narrative podcast can’t so easily achieve.

Around when I became a “Normal Gossip” listener, I stopped watching drama videos on YouTube. I had once enjoyed halfhour- to hour-long explanations and rants about what other content creators and celebrities were doing wrong. I frequented channels like Smokey Glow. Other times, I clicked on long videos from and about people I didn’t know or care about, guided by titles about people breaking the law, killing their pets and exploiting their children.

These videos would function as podcasts or background noise while I cleaned my room or folded laundry.

If the video’s creator was a good storyteller, I enjoyed listening for a while, at least enough not to click on something else. Listening to several of these videos in a row, however, left me feeling strange. The stories themselves had little emotional impact. I had no connection to them, and they had become commonplace. Besides, as terrible as anything was that I heard, I was listening under the guise of entertainment. These types of stories weren’t shocking anymore, and the reason I clicked in the first place was to be entertained.

I fear I have become desensitized to the often horrific stories of abuse and exploitation by celebrities that I hear on YouTube. I no longer watch those videos as much, less out of consideration of my mental health and more because I no longer enjoy them. In contrast to “Normal Gossip” episodes, these videos made me feel distanced from the YouTube community.

Hearing the inconceivable things that some people have done broke any sense of community.

XOXO

Design by Abby Schreck

CARLY BRECHNER Daily Arts Contributor

Design by Abby Schreck

Lets talk about excessive

This time last year, the Internet was preparing itself for the long-awaited sophomore season of “Euphoria.” Season two dropped in January 2022 after complications from the pandemic left viewers waiting three years since the release of the first season. While there was speculation and excitement about what the second season would entail, no one was ready for the ruthless amount of unnecessary nudity that stained our screens.

Viewers were quick to notice that Sydney Sweeney’s (“The White Lotus”) character Cassie had more nude scenes than any other character and shared their concerns on social media platforms like Twitter and TikTok. One Tweet reads “now even jacob has said something about the nudity in euphoria, sam levinson you’re a sick man,” referring to actor Jacob Elordi (“The Kissing Booth”) who plays Nate Jacobs on the show, and the producer Sam Levinson (“Malcolm & Marie”). Another user comments that “i think euphoria would be a much more interesting show if it focused on exploring grief rather than on trying to portray the most extreme situations possible and show the most nudity on screen,” emphasizing that for many viewers, unnecessary nudity detracts from the show’s storyline more than it adds nuance.

It’s not just the superfluity of the nudity that is a problem, but also its relation to the context of the show. “Euphoria” paints a very unrealistic and dangerous image of sexuality for young people, who are watching a show that is supposed to revolve around a group of high schoolers. In the context of the show, these are underage kids engaging in

excessive displays of sexuality, frequently underscored with violence. The simple nudity isn’t the issue, but rather how the excessive displays of nudity — especially those accentuated with abuse — promote a harmful depiction of hypersexuality for viewers and actors alike.

Though actors from “Euphoria” have spoken up in defense of Levinson and the show’s nudity, their comments are not always relieving: “There are moments where Cassie was supposed to be shirtless and I would tell Sam, ‘I don’t really think that’s necessary here.’ … When I didn’t want to do a nude scene, he didn’t make me,” Sweeney shared with The Independent. While it’s nice to know that Sweeney maintained some autonomy on set, it is distressing to learn that she was responsible for telling Levinson “no,” and a bit appalling to learn that the second season was originally going to have more nudity.

The nudity of “Euphoria” (for characters of all genders) was so excessive, it was more shocking to see an episode without any. While most fans didn’t hesitate to mock the show or critique Levinson for the superfluous nudity and sex scenes, others remained unfazed: “I understand the argument of Euphoria having too much nudity because they’re high schoolers in the show but at the same time its like….is this the first and only HBO series you have watched?”

That Twitter user was correct: HBO is one of the biggest offenders in terms of needless nudity. For years, shows like “True Detective,” “Minx,” “Vinyl” and “True Blood” have exemplified the network’s taste for nakedness, and it isn’t necessarily a fluke that its top performing shows, “Game of Thrones” and “Euphoria,” respectively, also rank highly in

the nudity department.

Arts

in

It was watching the fourth episode of HBO’s newest release, “House of the Dragon” (which claims HBO’s mostwatched series premiere title) that prompted my reflections on nudity in television. Though thus far, the series has stayed true to original “GoT” lore — with respect to incestuous relationships and over-thetop violence — “HoD” has not yet matched its predecessors’ appreciation of nudism. While prior episodes in the season consist of brief brothel scenes, it isn’t until episode four that “HoD” attempts to make its parent show proud.

While I watched the episode with a fellow Daily Arts staffer, Swara Ramaswamy, we agreed that the sex scene shared between Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock, “Upright”) and Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel, “The Serpent”) seemed to prioritize reality and thoughtfulness as opposed to gratuitous vulgarity. We thought that the director (Clare Kilner, “The Mosquito Coast”) and intimacy coordinator (Miriam Lucia, “The Nevers”) conducted a very tasteful scene between the actors, who purportedly spent seven months preparing for the moment. They worked tirelessly with the intimacy

coordinators to not only deliver a realistic depiction of the awkwardness and vulnerability of sex, but also to ensure that the scene was sensitive and respectful of the actors. Is it a coincidence that the director of the episode is a woman? Perhaps not, if we are only to take the directors into consideration (Kilner herself has explained her “feminine approach” to the sex scene). It is deserving of some acknowledgment, nonetheless, that we tend to see the most nudity in television when shows and episodes are directed by men.

This conversation isn’t new. People have been speaking up about the excessive nudity in television for years now — not because we’re all prudes, but because of the increasingly obvious surplus of unnecessary televised nudity that, at best, detracts from the shows at hand, and, at worse, promotes dangerous entanglements of sex and violence. As seen in “House of the Dragon,” sex and nudity in television can be delivered skillfully and successfully; there is no excuse for overabundant nudity, especially when it encourages and exposes both actors and viewers to extreme and exorbitant portrayals of hypersexuality.

Dear bigots: Read a damn book

If you haven’t heard, some people (conservatives) are upset that people of Color have been cast in Amazon’s new series, “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.” The series is a prequel to “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien, which was adapted in the early 2000s into an award winning film series by Peter Jackson. Now, the new series is being criticized by some on the right for being “too woke.”

In an interview with CNN, Brandon Morse, an editor at RedState.com, a conservative news site, lambasts Amazon for “corrupting” Tolkien’s legacy and universe. He claims that the inclusion of Black people in Tolkien’s Middle-earth universe, which is modeled after Europe, is heresy, because obviously Black and Brown people never existed outside of Africa and Mexico.

He asserts that inclusivity and diversity are attempts to “wokeify” the story. He calls these changes “perverse” and states, “if you focus on introducing modern

political sentiments, such as the leftist obsession with identity issues that only go skin deep, then you’re no longer focusing on building a good story.” In one of his many blog posts, he backs up his criticism with his credentials, boasting, “I’m such a Lord of the Rings fan that I’ve read the Silmarillion four times and I’ve played almost every ‘Lord of the Rings’ video game that’s ever been created.”

I have never seen someone write something more idiotic, more childlike (“I’ve played almost every Lord of the Rings video game that’s ever been created”), more devoid of intelligence than what this grown man wrote about this show. We can break down why I believe he is wrong about the show, but first let’s go over why I care that he sullied Tolkien’s name in the first place.

To put it lightly, I adore Tolkien. I’m surprised I’ve only made one passing reference to him throughout the nearly four years I’ve written for this publication, but I’m here to set the record straight.

HBO: Only a naked Matt Smith remains

company’s leadership and the demographic of employees fired. But the round of layoffs was only one prong of many myopic costsaving changes.

Editor’s Note: A Daily staffer is affiliated with Warner Bros., but they were not involved in the creation, production or publication of this piece.

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

On April 8, 2022, 153 days before the British Queen Regnant Elizabeth II’s death, AT&T’s WarnerMedia and Discovery combined and became Warner Bros. Discovery. As a consequence of the merger, Warner Bros. Discovery arranged a marriage between its streaming counterparts HBO Max — the illustrious home of Matt Smith’s rear filmed in cinematic 2:1 aspect ratio — and Discovery Plus, a ruthless unscripted cable TV swamp. However, the company shake-up has been dogged by controversy, internal leaks and disappointing cancellations. In an absurdly short period of time, the media company cornered its contracted artists into considering pirating their own work and became the latest battleground in a larger conversation regarding artists, ownership of art and corporatism. No, all is not well with Warner Bros. Discovery.

Newly instated CEO David Zaslav cut his TV executive teeth on unscripted reality television like “90 Day Fiancé” and had a meteoric rise, uniting his much smaller Discovery Group with the gigantic WarnerMedia. Perhaps conscious of his unscripted reality TV pedigree, Zaslav initially attempted to create a narrative of himself as pro-artist and procreative. His recent profile in the Wall Street Journal includes quotes from Zaslav’s corporate peers testifying to his financial sensibility and support for artists. The exclusion of artists working with HBO Max and Discovery Plus alludes to Zaslav’s priorities.

Namely: a $55 billion debt Zaslav inherited after the company merger.

In an opening salvo to defray the debt, Zaslav laid off 14% of company staff, the majority being HBO alums. That decision led to former executives accusing Zaslav of being anti-diversity, given the composition of the

August 2022 was an emotionally crushing period for staff and creative teams working at Warner Bros. Discovery. Without any notice or communication, Zaslav began axing programming, secretly removing content from streaming services and deleting social media posts.

Most prominent among those revenue-driven decisions is the shelving of HBO’s nearly finished $90 million dollar Batgirl film. Variety reports that Zaslav did not believe the film would recoup production and advertising costs and made an unprecedented decision to bury the movie to claim a tax break. Effectively, if a company declares that it will stop profiting off of a piece of media, it can claim a tax break for its associated costs. To clarify, HBO had already invested roughly $90 million into a nearly complete product; fans and actors were excited about its release. Warner Bros. Discovery is not softreleasing its product or sending it straight to streaming to save on advertising. Like a horrible remix of “Zack Snyder’s Justice League,” HBO has a fully filmed, exciting project that they’re burying alive. Unless we are very, very lucky, “Batgirl,” starring Leslie Grace (“In the Heights”), will never see the light of day.

Batgirl’s directors, Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, found out about their cancellation through the news cycle. In vain, they tried to pirate their own movie as a keepsake of the film. But the directors were circumvented and were locked out of the film’s servers. In what would become a pattern, El Arbi and Fallah released a video over Instagram Reels detailing their sense of betrayal and the scope of Warner Bros. Discovery’s lack of communication. At the end of the video, they encourage fans to watch their upcoming film “Rebel” to imagine what their “Batgirl” could have been.

Design by Abby Schreck

ELIZABETH YOON Daily Arts Writer

Design by Abby Schreck

This

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth … and this two-thousand word Michigan Daily article. Indeed, it is crazy to believe, insane to think the piece you’re stumbling across at this moment might’ve been planned out since the dawn of time. And while origins of the Universe remain the subject of much dualistic debate, there’s no denying that our mystifying fascina tion with the start stays stuck in our mind.

The start and the end remain divinely intertwined. One doesn’t have to look any further than Beyon cé’s Renaissance to witness how riv eting a seamless transition from one song to the next can be. Upon first listen, I re-call, as do many others, feeling uncertain in my ability to dis tinguish the beginning of one track and the end of another. Such seam lessness can place us into a flow state so sublime, we apprehend the linear experience of time itself.

Similarly, September is certainly a time in which we can see the lucid interplay of beginnings as endings with the start of school followed by autumn’s imbricating advent devouring whole the remnants of a departed summer. In the enveloping, we too are squelched … by school/ work schedules swiftly changing and weather patterns vastly rearranging. Soon, we arrive in the underbelly of adversity, hardship and woe — fully estranged from the for mer glory of a season past.

Fall begins, foisting the forces of late-stage capitalism onto us in full swing. The damning compul sions of academic and professional life leave us as lifeless as the fallen leaves. Sordidly, we flounder in a frenzy of applications and audi tions, mass meetings and recruit

Beginnings as endings

ment, harrowing responsibilities and harsh deadlines. Summer feels like sustained heat and unrestrained youth. Fall feels like chills, chim ing in exponentially, brisk but not as cold as the chains of autumn’s adult hood taking hold. For me, this fall in 2022 happened to fall in the humble beginnings of my adulthood — roll ing forward toward the end of my post-secondary academic career all the while laying pregnant with the prospects of my future professional career.

All that to say: it’s the beginning of the end of my college experience. This month has mixed us seniors in a slew of last firsts. Last first day of school. Last first Game Day. Last first shows, last first articles, the last of the firsts which shall first and fore most last til we take our final steps on Graduation Day, having finished our formal time here as students at the University of Michigan … Personally, I ain’t thinking ‘bout that right now.

Right now, I been staying stuck in the right now, the righteousness of the eternal, now moment.

Now, my meeting with the current moment is not without significant consideration of the past, the future, the lasts, and the firsts which shall not go unforgotten. Instead, I realize that in reconciling our origin with our destiny, we can become inten tionally aligned with our true self in the present, not neglecting our past nor future, but remaining undeterred by their detriments nonetheless. As Indian guru Nisargadatta Maharaj asserts, “When life and death are seen as essential to each other, as two aspects of one being, that is immor tality. To see the end in the beginning and the beginning in the end is the intimation of eternity.”

Many of us have pondered our own destiny, whether consciously or unconsciously. We are all aware these lives are impermanent. We may ruminate on after-lives, heavens

and hells, or opt out of such specula tion perhaps out of anxious appre hension. Yet, shall we re-call that our endings are inseparable from our beginnings, then we might find our selves not fraught with fear by death but in deep understanding of its over arching potential to serve as to what Japanese author Hiroshi Obayashi refers to as the “liberation of noble soul from bodily prison.”

But is this bodily existence a pris on? Are we trapped here on Earth?

Serving time for misdeeds done in past lives on previous planets or planes of being? What led us to live these lives in the first place? While ruminating on destiny can lead to deliverance, we ultimately must attempt to understand our origins in order to be fully aligned with our true self.

Pondering pre-existence can lead us to be more curious about the ori gins of everything in our life. How did we arrive where we are at this moment? Why this life? Why now?

What events led up to this instance? How might we have ended up else where? So often do we set out at the start of an experience with taut expectations and preconceived notions. Our ego wants us to be in control to be comfortable. Ironically, it is typically not til we embrace the discomfort derived from relinquish ing our power to divinity that we feel most able to act. When we forgo our desire to control and trust that all things are working for our good, that this eternal moment is sacred and full of meaning, we find ourselves enriched by all the possibilities our Creator has in store for us. As English philosopher John Ellis McTaggart states, “A state of absolute perfection would render further death improb able.” In other words, without con flict we would lead a monotonous existence devoid of meaning. Once we acknowledge we are always arriving in the moment, conflict

becomes an opportunity for growth.

In our pre-existent state — wheth er we believe that to be constituted by past lives or some form of previ ous consciousness — we undoubt edly acquired the qualities and skills inherent to us in this life which ini tially seem innate.

Much like how our previous experiences in high school, middle and elementary carry themselves over into college, much like how the residue of our long-gone sum mer dwells with us, now, well into the school year, the lessons learned in our previous existence (whatever that may be) certainly re-mains part of our self. As McTaggart claims, “If the same self passes through various lives, any change which happens to it at any time must affect its state in the time immediately subsequent, and, through this, in all future.”

This is not to say we are fully determined by what’s come before, as we know with our bodily experience that this is not the truth. McTaggart draws on the notion of forgetfulness in order to elucidate his point about us losing memories of important events that nonetheless have dutiful ly shaped our self, provided signifi cant value and affected our essence. He maintains that memory makes us wiser, more virtuous and indicates to us that those we relate with have loved us and have been loved by us in the past. Yet while we do forget astounding instances, we do not necessarily regress. Their relevance endures on an energetic level.

It’s the feelings of déjà vu or delight that we get when we experi ence a moment that feels timeless or transcendent. When the music at home, in the car or at the club blesses with unremitting beloved bliss. When we hear a word, phrase or even a single syllable that sits with us, lingering long after being uttered. When seeing someone for the first time feels like a re-union at last. At the very least, we can re-cognize, fully re-Sourced, how subtly we’ve been informed by forces originating from lifetimes ago … and with this knowledge, know that our everyday decisions in the moment will in part determine our ultimate destiny, stay ing with us as we enter dimensions beyond in death.

I think about this now, as I am, like I said, stuck in the moment. I think about how little so much of what I do now will matter upon the academic death that is graduation. Moving on from Ann Arbor next year, I wonder how many relationships will fade, devotions disappear, fires inevitably extinguish, alliances and associa tions wither away. And while I know many of the ties I’m maintaining at the moment may not necessarily “matter” in nine months, when I’ve moved on, what will prolong, what will matter and what I will re-mem ber is the supreme impression it all has had on my soul.

On writer’s block

to believe it is alone solely because no other whales can hear its calls.

Sometimes I think about the whale going miles and miles in search.

“Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age/The child is grown, and puts away child ish things/Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay

I remember exactly where I was when Alex told me to write. More specifically, he said, “You know what you need to do. Just write about it.”

We were crammed on the platform, a block or two from Cornelia Street, slick with sweat and desperate to get on the subway. I nodded and smiled, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth and still don’t.

The truth is I can’t. I can’t write. I’ve found myself in three of the most inspirational cities in the world in the last four months. As a girl who still lives eight miles from where she was born, this experience should be the kind of eye opener that connects me to my writing, but no, it’s not. The thing no one tells you about being a writer with writer’s block is that it’s not that the ideas and inspiration aren’t there. They are there. You feel them crawling under your skin.

Fragments of sentences that are so close to perfect, grazing the back of your mind like, for lack of creativ ity, a broken record. The real prob lem is that there’s a disconnect; an inability to tune into the frequencies surrounding you and communicate them. Have you heard the story of the whale that was out of frequen cy? It’s referred to as the loneliest whale in the world, forever bound

Sometimes I think about how I feel like that whale and I’m struck by how terribly uncreative the thought is. Sometimes I punish myself for not pushing myself harder only to subse quently be frustrated by how hard I am on myself.

I can’t remember where I heard it, but I’ve thought often about the argument that time is not linear, it’s stacked. So in theory, everything that is happening has already hap pened and everything that is going to happen has already happened and is currently happening. I’ve always interpreted it as everything I’ve gained and lost is always there, just simply with me. This thought has always comforted me. My best friends have moved away, graduated, but maybe if I close my eyes hard enough, sitting on the porch we used to cram ourselves into regularly, I’ll be able to be there again. I’ll be her again with all my friends, listening to folklore for the first time while standing on the table. If I concentrate enough, Rita’s hodgepodge collage will suddenly be removed from the tabletop, as if it was never there, and be replaced by bottles and lit candles and the needle we had used to pierce Hugo’s ear.

But what if I took it further, to another place I never wanted to leave? What if I never actually left New York? Just stayed in the same spot for ages through sheer force of will? If I stayed on that subway indefinitely back then in Manhat tan would I eventually go back to the

start? Travel through time right back to the beginning? Do you think if I stood here long enough I’d go back to where I was, to who I was? Could I feel the chill of the New York night air pass through my teeth one more time? The sun press against my back? I bet if I sat on the 4 line long enough I would go back again. Would I feel time stacking like some overlapping thing that piles and piles on? Would I feel myself pass right by me, content with the life she created?

I have a hard time letting go of things, especially the past. This is not necessarily conducive to this period of life. I’m currently 21. At 22, I will be graduating and leaving the city and this eight mile radius in which I have spent most of my life. Life will transition into either Chicago or New York, where most University of Michigan graduates move. At 25, I will statistically have the most friends I will have ever in my life. The number will taper off gradually as I get married and have children and move to the suburbs and, God forbid, participate in a car pool. Between 35 and 55, I will have some internal midlife crisis, moving to a farm to complete my first novel or finally deciding to get my MFA. This will be a somewhat successful endeavor. At 60, I’ll retire and apply for that AARP membership. Life will continue on and I’m terrified. I’m not scared of aging or the increasing responsibility or of how life inher ently gets more and more narrow as more and more choices are made.

I’m terrified that I will be in that car pool line staring off into the distance willing myself to be able to go back. I am terrified that I will continue to

remain disconnected and unable to write again. Even more so, I’m terri fied that I will always be trying to go to where I was and who I have been, forever wishing I stayed on the sub way back then or on the porch with my friends in Ann Arbor.

You want to know the quickest way to feel old? Go to Festifall. See, I had been contemplating whether or not to smile knowingly at the fresh men wandering past or make a run to the nearest injectable place and get Botox, when I failed to notice a bright-eyed freshman blinking at me.

“What if I can’t produce content?” she said in a childlike voice that made me sound as if I smoke ten packs a day. She seems familiar. Like she

On a much more miniscule level, there’s always the day-to-day begin nings as endings that entreat us to treat our daily endeavors with an underlying episodic awareness.

“The day is an epitome of the year,” as Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau remarked, and with that in mind, it becomes clear that each morning is a master class in spring ing back to life as is the month of March. When asleep we lose touch with our conscious self. Thus, our dreams do resemble a death of some sort.

As analytical psychologist James Hillman describes, dreams are chil dren of the Night linked closely to Sleep and Death. He posits that, “We may believe we are living life only on the level of life, but we cannot escape the psychic significance of what we are doing.”

In between the start of a new day and the end of an old one, our dreams scaffold us into the dregs of the underworld. As Hillman postulates, dreams plainly put, ask us, “Where is my fate or individuation process going? … We know (exactly) where our individuation process is going — to death.” Yet upon waking, we are given life, yes? It makes sense then, why we often wake — if allowed proper rest unfettered from the reins of capital — regenerated, renewed, reborn. If our waking up is rehears al for a future resurrection, then it would do us well to ensure that our mornings are filled with the most fine-tuned spiritual practice.

Needless to say, this is rarely the case. How frequently do we awake and find ourselves fixated on the first worldly pleasure we can find? Nowa days, our phone alarm so effortlessly facilitates us into the fold before we are even completely conscious. Every morning is now an immedi ate marination in the matrix of mass programming and corporate control. And if we’re not apprehended by the allure of our phone, then we’re likely caught in the clutches of caffeine, nicotine, marijuana, white sugar or sexual gratification. Wrapped in a wounding world of vice, we greet mornings with such wretchedness, leading me to wonder if we fear our most natural state.

Are we afraid to be alone with our thoughts? Alone in our body? Alone as our Self? It seems the social stratification of clock-time has con stricted our ability to truly be on our own when white supremacy and late-stage capitalism prey on every minute of our day from the moment we wake up. Mandated early meet ings, classes and work shifts are all imposed as absolutely important, subjecting us to punishment when we fail to meet societal standards which we did not agree upon. Even in isolation or supposed solitude, we are only one email, one phone call, one text message and countless social media applications away from con

necting. Always allowing everybody to access us, even in digital space, at all times, has scathing implications on a somatic and energetic level. No wonder we’re so quick to quell our everlasting discomfort with deathly material delights.

Under our current cultural socioeconomic system’s hierarchical structuring of social time, every awakening is a rude awakening. We are always tired. Our nervous sys tems are always dysregulated. We are always experiencing some form of physical, emotional and spiritual depletion. Collectively, we’ve been robbed of the relaxing joy of an early rise. No longer do we view our morn ings as a revival in which we are to actualize our abundance upon open ing eyes.

With that said, we might consider resolving to start our mornings with reflective, soul-enriching activities.

Journaling, meditation, music, exer cise and simply existing in the quaint glory of a quiet sunrise can allow us to clearly see, feel and witness the all-encompassing beauty of morning. Mornings build momentum! If we are to see the day, the planetary hour as our life and death cycle on display, then we can simply say that in the morning we are a mere child. But as the day goes on, and we drastically develop, have formative experiences, learn, love and lose til finally, we’ve aged, acquainting ourselves with the wisdom of the night.

It would do us good to embrace this wisdom, these nights which as we know, exist as beginnings in themselves. The day is on its death bed but the night is still young. Espe cially on the weekend, our nights are rife with potential. Bountiful new beginnings open up at the end of the day when we roam and play in the darkness, in deep space, in divinity, in non-duality, in between in-betweens.

Of course, in between the begin ning, the end, the morning and the night, there is the middle. Too often do we overlook the middle in which we are not straddling two extremes but meandering in the mundane. Just as summer situates itself as the high noon of our Earthly seasonal cycles, there’s something about the sustainment, the warm, endearing sensation of a mellow after-noon that invites us to be idle. To rest. To re-connect with others. To take life a little slower. To bask in mediocrity. In the middle. And at the moment.

And in the after-noon when sum mer is over, evening arrives, as does Fall. We fall back into place, once again arriving in autumn, not yet deterred by the dead of winter, of night, of self in slumber. Instead, we arrive — sensibly so in September — in autumn, in evening’s middle-aged maturity, reveling in the knowledge of setting sun. By then it seems we’re nearly back to where we began. At the end.

could very well be me. Not me at this moment, but who I was on that Ann Arbor porch three years ago before I ever went to New York. She’s the me that I have to still face as time stacks and overlaps. She’s the me who can’t write a piece and the me that clings to a childish nostalgia. I blink. She then asks me, “How do you get over writer’s block?” My stomach drops.

I wish I could tell you I didn’t lie to her. I did. I told her some bullshit about seeking new experiences and finding new sources of inspiration.

What I should have told her is this:

“Everyone gets writer’s block. I haven’t written a complete story in months. My latest piece is getting published this month; it has taken

since May to write, since most of it is just unfinished thoughts about how I’m absolutely terrified about life. It’s scary and I don’t know when this dis connect with my writing is going to exactly end, but I have a hypothesis. It’s growing pains. Writer’s block is just growing pains. It’s the hurdle between childhood and adulthood. I bet, if I learn to let go of living in the past, then I won’t miss the future me passing right by like strangers on a subway.

If I just stop trying so hard to go back to the old me, I will finally hear those frequencies again and finally be able to piece together those fragments of near perfect sentences and write. Write something new.” Or maybe not.

KATHERINA

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Design by Evelyn Mousigian

PAIGE HODDER

Ammar Ahmad Julian Barnard Brandon Cowit Jess D’Agostino Ben Davis Shubhum Giroti Devon Hesano

JULIAN BARNARD AND SHUBHUM GIROTI

VANESSA KIEFER AND KATE WEILAND Managing Editors

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

Sophia Lehrbaum Olivia Mouradian Siddharth Parmar Rushabh Shah Nikhil Sharma

Lindsey Spencer Evan Stern Anna Trupiano Jack Tumpowsky Alex Yee Quin Zapoli

The Fatigue of Tragedy

CUTLER

Sitting in Hatcher Graduate Library, my eyes glaze over my history textbook and I find myself staring out the window at the flagpole. Why is it at half-mast? Now that I think about it, when was the last time I saw flagpoles not at half-mast?

When four students were murdered in my hometown and in my old classroom, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ordered flags across the state to be lowered for 12 days. After 19 more students and two teachers were murdered in Uvalde, Texas, President Joe Biden ordered flags across the country to be lowered for four days. Today, it turns out, the flag in the Diag is lowered in honor of Queen Elizabeth II; what a relief that it isn’t in memory of dead children.

After Nov. 30, 2021, I had school shooting nightmares every day for six weeks. After Uvalde, another two weeks of nightmares. After I was at the national March For Our Lives Rally in Washington, D.C. on June 11 and a man stormed the stage threatening to shoot us all, and one of my fellow congressional interns had to hold me until I could breathe again, they came back for two more months. After a friend innocently let off a New Year’s Eve popper outside of Pizza House that sounded remarkably like a gunshot, the nightmares came back for another week. I’m exhausted. But isn’t everyone?

So many of us who are supposed to be focusing on becoming the “Leaders and Best” are just focusing on getting through the day. We’re anxious, depressed and

terrified of the next horrible thing we’ll see in the news.

We’re trying to complete our classes while leaders of this country take away our rights. We’re even trying to avoid getting a deadly virus. We’re preparing for long, vibrant careers even though we know the Earth probably won’t make it that long. Apparently, now, we also have to worry about guns at U-M frat parties.

Living in a society that constantly fails us is exhausting. When we live in a country that leaves us with dead classmates and no bodily autonomy, where do we go from here? How do we get excited about applying for grad school and going to Rick’s when our peers are dying? How do we, as survivors and their loved ones, move forward when there’s a new tragedy every week to remind us?

I don’t mean to pretend there isn’t progress. I stood in the Capitol Building and watched the Protecting Our Kids Act, the largest gun violence prevention law in U.S. history, get passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, despite the Senate bill being much weaker. I’ve seen the Oxford High School students after me dedicate their lives to fighting for Madisyn, Tate, Justin and Hanna. I am so proud of my peers who will not stop marching, yelling and working until they reach their goals. I want to be one of them.

I also stood in the Judiciary Committee hearing room and wiped the tears falling down my face as U.S. Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., video-called in from his home for a hearing on how to best prevent school shootings, and showed off all of his military-style guns with their accompanying high capacity magazines. He even explained how many people

they would each kill and that he always carries one in public, just before dropping one of the 21-round magazines on the floor. When U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, concernedly asked him if that gun was loaded, he shot back, missing her point entirely: “I’m at my house. I can do whatever I want with my guns.” How do we handle watching news clips of this at night and then immediately going to class the next morning?

Sure, we can vote, volunteer or run for office. We can share what we care about on social media and at the dinner table, but at what point does the omnipresent tragedy overshadow the joy of working for change? At what point do we stop and allow ourselves space to experience the devastating reality around us? Oh sorry, too late, you have a quiz tomorrow. Maybe the next time I see a flag at half-mast I just won’t Google why.

I don’t have a solution. Self-care doesn’t cut it. Selfcare won’t protect us from gun violence, police violence, forced births, climate change and the litany of other issues we face every day. It is difficult to truly capture the exhaustion that comes from waking up each day and watching your country fail you. Especially when you’re one of the people who will deal with the reality that 80-year-old senators leave behind. Some of us may respond in different ways, but none of us have the chance to truly feel our grief and concern over the world around us. I’ll never forget those who have been killed, and I will never stop hoping for change. However, I can’t promise I’ll never stop fighting for it. One day, the fatigue of tragedy will take me out.

As college students, none of us are strangers to high stress levels.

At some point in our college careers, most of us will be faced with 5:00 a.m. nights to finish essays worth 20% of our grades and networking events for which we feel not at all prepared. I’m convinced that the fact I’ve made it this far in college is partially due to “winging it” and partially due to obsessively planning all of my days down to the minute.

The fact of the matter is, nothing truly prepares us for college, and a lot of us end up “winging it” just as I have. And once we’re in college, we are met with the same dilemma — college doesn’t equip us for the rest of our lives. Our sense of agency over our own lives could be drastically improved if colleges dedicated more time to teaching students life skills rather than primarily teaching students career skills (which is another area colleges fall short in to begin with).

A 2021 survey revealed that 81% of college graduates wish they had been taught more life skills before graduating. Some of the main areas where students felt lost were investing money, planning long-term financial goals, managing student loan debt and learning how to budget.

Outside financial literacy, students were concerned about being unable to cook, do laundry or reset a Wi-Fi router. For issues like those, one would think we could turn to our parents or guardians for assistance. I have been lucky enough to have my mom provide me with much of the knowledge I will need to succeed in life outside of my career. However, it is ignorant to assume that every student has the privilege of a safe, comfortable living environment with access to someone who is knowledgeable in all of those areas. Luckily, our generation has brought with it technology — we have access to the internet, which gives us access to any knowledge we could possibly desire. Even then, it would be convenient to have a mainstream form of guidance provided through our education.

Fortunately, progress has been made. In the state of Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer recently signed a bill requiring all high schools to include a financial literacy course in their curriculum, an invaluable asset to any student. At the University of Michigan we actually have a couple resources such as a one-credit LSA course about financial literacy; the Smart Borrowing initiative, which includes counseling

about student finances; and the National Endowment for Financial Education, which offers many resources for students to learn about money management.

Personally, I did not know about any of these resources until doing some research for this piece. Maybe I did not hear about them since I was an incoming freshman during the “COVID year,” but nevertheless it does seem to be a general area that students should be made more aware of. With the new presidency of Santa Ono, we can only hope that the change in administration will encourage this much-needed shift in awareness.

With all that said, we would hope that we are preparing students well for their careers since we are not necessarily preparing them for some aspects of life itself. Unfortunately, another survey conducted by McGraw Hill Education shows that a mere 40% of college seniors feel prepared for their upcoming life in the workforce. Participants reported that they wish their colleges would have provided more internships and professional opportunities, more career preparation and more alumni networking opportunities.

I am lucky enough to be in the College of Pharmacy, which has only about 100 undergraduate students, thus giving me ample opportunity to work in a personalized, one-on-one environment with instructors who are eager to connect me with whatever and whoever I need to prepare for my career. However, this isn’t the case for all colleges within the University. If you are feeling estranged from your administration or your future goals, consider smaller communities within the University, which will help you to accomplish your career goals while feeling a sense of solidarity with your peers — for example, professional fraternities.

LSA senior Izzy Steinberg, executive director of Wolverine Support Network, reports on this solidarity phenomena by

emphasizing “the power of peer support and forming genuine connections on campus.”

There are over 1,400 clubs on campus, tens of thousands of students and infinite things to do in Ann Arbor. With all these options comes the opportunity to connect with like-minded students and superiors, which are both crucial to career preparation and success. There is a world of opportunity which we can and should take advantage of.

Change and indecision are undoubtedly scary parts of college, but you are not alone. Between 20% and 50% of college students come in undecided and about 75% of college students change their major at least once before graduation. Even though many schools allow two years of time before declaration of majors, any time taken to “explore different options” can end up feeling like wasted time that could have been spent taking core requirements.

Granted, some majors allow more flexibility than others. For example, with a Communication and Media Major there are 28 credits that must be strictly adhered to, as opposed to a Bachelor of Science in Pharmaceutical Sciences, which demands 73 inflexible credits. For this reason, students often rush themselves to choose a path more quickly than they are ready for. The idea of knowing exactly what you want to do at a young age is flawed — our education system should have more fluidity, opportunity and exploration.

In the grand scheme of things, a degree from the University is great, but what if you don’t know what to do with that degree? What if you don’t have any interpersonal skills or blow through your newfound earnings within a couple months because you weren’t taught financial literacy? Let’s do better as an institution and as a holistic system in helping our students carry their bright knowledge out with them with self assurance that they can and will do great things in life.

Combatting the sophomore slump

t the beginning of freshman year, everything is so new and exciting. Every first-year student is in the same boat when it comes to making new friends, navigating new classes and weighing different majors. Many of us are told we have such a long time to figure out what we want to study and not to worry, so we don’t. Then sophomore year rolls around and some of us start to freak out. Not only do we have less time to figure out what we’re majoring in, but many of us feel lost, confused and exhausted.

The sophomore slump refers to the struggles, fears and fatigue we feel in our second year.

As the exhilaration of freshman year fades into the monotony of sophomore year, there’s little new excitement and many tend to feel burnt out. Alongside the day to day movements, classes become harder and hours of homework start to pile up. As schoolwork and responsibilities pile on, more and more stress builds.

Four years seems like a short

amount of time in the long run, but when multitudes of stress and anxiety build up, it can feel like a lot longer by year two.

As a sophomore myself, I’ve noticed the vast difference between last year and this year, both academically and socially. At this time last year, everything was new to me, so it was exciting to try to figure it out. Things are no longer new this year, but they’re also no longer exciting to figure out. Last year, it was fun to go out, meet new people and experience the “Michigan experience” as a freshman.

This year, I don’t have nearly as much enthusiasm for going out and, with friend groups already established, it seems no one is trying to meet new people anymore. As someone pursuing dual degrees, feeling the pressure to declare my major and fit everything into my schedule is not fun.

It’s tiring, draining and stressful.

Sometimes, it feels like I’m simply scraping by. I know this is a sentiment many sophomores share on campus.

Seth Corba is a sophomore in the School of Nursing. It’s

widely known that studies in the medical field tend to be challenging, and may often require a greater time commitment than liberal arts degrees. Corba decided to study nursing because, as he said, he was “in hospitals a lot growing up, so the healthcare

professionals around me inspired me to have a career in that field and be able to help people as much as they did.” While he enjoys his field of study, sophomore year has come with some setbacks.

“The workload increases a lot since freshman year

because the classes just get much more difficult and I am feeling fatigued, burnt out and overwhelmed.” Overwhelming classes, work and the dawning of the long four-year haul of getting your degree(s) can all lead to this slump. It may seem daunting,

but sophomores can beat the slump. According to the University of Texas at Dallas, it’s critical to prioritize both physical and mental health first. Drowning in homework and not feeling like you’re living up to your expectations can really take a toll on you, so it’s important to take time to care for yourself and seek out support if you need help. To combat his sophomore slump, Corba said he is taking time to just “exist as a student. I’ve also been spending a lot of time in nature to center myself outside of school along with spending time with those I love.” Sophomore year is stressful for a lot of us, but it’s important to remember that we’re not alone in feeling this way. If you’re struggling mentally, CAPS (Counseling and Psychological Services) is a program here on campus that is available to all students for counseling and mental health services. The sophomore slump can make you feel burnt out, but it is completely normal to feel this way, especially at a school as academically challenging and competitive as the University of Michigan.

KATIE

College falls short in teaching students life skills — here’s how we can improve

Stanford

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ANNA TRUPIANO Opinion Columnist

Design By Reid Graham

I

magine you’re back in middle school, and you’ve just started your first period. You learned all about “that time of the month” from your health teacher, or maybe you had “the talk” with your parents, and now you have to go buy period products. You go and see an aisle marked “Feminine Hygiene Products” in the store. Most people get their first period between ages 10 and 15, with the average age being 12. The harmful term “feminine hygiene” gets burned into the mind of every young individual who menstruates. Those two words have quite an impact because words are powerful and language matters. People deserve not to be ashamed of something that is natural. We all need to start talking openly and positively about periods.

Every young person who gets their period has learned the term “feminine hygiene.” The language behind “hygiene” comes with the notion that periods are unhygienic and unsanitary. There is nothing dirty or unhygienic about having periods, and this term perpetuates the stigma around a natural human function. Since this term is plastered on every period product, people grow up feeling ashamed of having their period. Teens and young adults are bombarded with media and messages that undermine their self-esteem. Words used in marketing of products should be positive and provide a realistic sense of normal bodily functions.

A poll says 58% of women have felt embarrassed because they were menstruating, and around 42% of women have experienced period shaming. This shame stems from the fact that women have been told their bodies should be clean and hygienic.

This $4.22 billion industry coined the phrase “feminine hygiene” products, and they keep using it to capitalize on the shame that women experience. In addition to it being psychologically harmful, the stigma of hygiene has contributed to medical issues associated with women

trying to stay clean. There are ongoing court cases against a pharmaceutical company for promoting the use of talcum powder linked to ovarian cancer. If people don’t push back against the notion of uncleanliness, industries will continue to create more and more products for women to buy.

Let’s talk about the history behind the term “feminine hygiene.” It started in 1873, when proclaimed anti-vice activist Anthony Comstock presented his ideas to Congress and set his anti-obscenity bill into motion. That same year, the Comstock Act passed in Congress. The legislation banned all materials deemed obscene. Items labeled as contraceptives or anything “immoral” or “indecent” were banned. This created an issue for the birth control industry. While birth control practices have been around since ancient times, choices were limited. The remaining choices were sometimes dangerous and often ineffective at preventing pregnancy. Margaret Sanger popularized the term “birth control” when she became the first to open a birth control clinic in 1916, only to be shut down nine days later because it violated the Comstock Act. For the birth control industry to continue, they needed to disguise their products with creative wording. Manufacturers at the company Zonite created the term that is still used today: “feminine hygiene” products. While this helped the company get around the Comstock Act, it also capitalized on the shame and stigma that society had attached to a normal bodily function — a bodily function that is needed in order to keep human civilization going.

The Comstock Act is a prime example of how men in Washington have been disappointing women throughout history. Due to that law, the term that shames people for menstruating was created. This has made generations of people feel embarrassed that they are “unsanitary.” We continue to see people in Washington — the majority of whom are

still white men — controlling women’s bodies. The most devastating and recent display of control occurred on June 24, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. We need our leaders to stop having a say over women’s bodies. We need to never again elect a president like Donald Trump, who publicly said “blood coming out of her wherever,” so we can be sure someone with that mentality will have no say over our bodies. Having a president who speaks so poorly of women, time and time again, perpetuates in the minds of others that women are second-class citizens. That makes it easier for lawmakers to think that they should be the ones who have the final say about issues like ending a pregnancy.

There are some movements that are lessening period shaming due to outspoken individuals striving to end the stigma around it. On Oct. 19, 2019, the United States celebrated the first National Period Day. This day is dedicated to raising awareness about period poverty issues and advocates to reduce the stigma and shame that surrounds periods.

This stigma around periods must change for the happiness and well-being of everyone who menstruates. Change needs to happen at all levels of government. Women should be able to make their own decisions about their own bodies. Men in power should be called out if they ever speak about women as if they are second class citizens. Parents should educate their children, those who menstruate and those who don’t, to show respect for everyone. Marketers and industries need to change the words they use and stop inventing products that are unnecessary and potentially harmful under the guise of cleanliness. The biggest change we can make to affect the way periods are perceived is to replace “feminine hygiene products” with “period products.” Make growing up just a little bit easier on middle schoolers. End the stigma that has been in our country for far too long. Just change two words, and we can break this cycle.

State Sen. Erika Geiss: Secure MI Vote is a sham

ERIKA GEISS State Senator

Besides being a thinly veiled attack on the freedom to vote for Black and low-income Michiganders, the so-called Secure MI Vote initiative is a crass political maneuver posing as a solution in search of a problem. Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, R-Clarklake, surely understands this as well as anyone.

“The Big Lie” of substantial voter fraud in the 2020 election has been thoroughly disproven by investigation after investigation, most notably in the Republicanled State Senate investigation of 2021. Even one of its biggest cheerleaders, Rudy Giuliani, said they have “lots of theories (but)… don’t have the evidence”. Nevertheless, extremists within the Republican party are now using this baseless conspiracy theory as an excuse to attempt to pass voter restriction laws that, by design, would make it harder for Black and lowincome Michiganders to vote. Our democracy hangs in the balance as we debate this issue.

It’s easy to understand how making people jump through a bunch of hoops unnecessarily could deter voters from casting a ballot when it is their right to do so. The architects of the anti-voter bills know that while 11% of all Americans lack ID, 25% of Black registered voters lack the specified ID they would require. Existing

law – that works and is safe and secure – already allows people who vote without an ID to cast a provisional ballot, one which counts only if the voter is determined to be eligible.

The extremist lawmakers backing this effort have crossed a red line. When the Michigan State University Board of Trustees considered a resolution to confront this abomination, it had sufficient support to be put on the agenda for their September 9 meeting.

The measure asked the vendors they do business with to stop financially supporting these extremists because it not only violated values long held by the university, but those the vendors professed themselves: that they supported fairness, equity and access to the ballot.

For example, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan’s CEO signed a joint statement last year actually opposing legislative proposals that would eventually become the Secure MI Vote initiative, yet they remain the top corporate contributor to the lawmakers backing that initiative.

Then Sen. Shirkey was asked about the MSU voting rights resolution in a Detroit News column.

He responded by threatening the funding of our public universities.

Perhaps it’s not a surprise that he would leverage this type of power dynamic since PACs he oversees also receive donations from some of the same university vendors. Sadly, one of the Trustees must have felt pressured by the hollow threat and the Board never took a vote on it, forgetting that

during the next budget cycle, Shirkey’s opinion or influence on any university budget will not matter as he will no longer be in office. These are the same financial scare tactics we’ve seen inserted in proposed legislation that threatens K-12 institutions with budgetary extortion if they don’t alter their curriculums to stop teaching the truth about our country’s complex history with respect to race.

The University of Michigan Board of Regents can still stand up for their principles and push back against this bully and his empty threats by taking a stand on voting rights. The Regents will hopefully remember that the harm caused to Black, brown and working class people if the bill proposed in Secure MI Vote becomes law will also be visited upon the student body who predominantly have the need to vote absentee.

Clearly, Sen. Shirkey would have people believe that our difference of opinion is partisan. It’s not. The right and freedom for everyone — including Black Michiganders and students — to vote and participate in our democracy should be a universal value, and it has only become a partisan issue because extremist Republicans like Shirkey have made it one. We hope that the University of Michigan Board of Regents will not cower in the face of Republican attacks, and will move its vendors to stop financing anti-democracy and anti-civil rights extremism with tax and tuition dollars. Standing by silently can no longer be conscionable.

Here’s how journalism could work better for all of us

ELINA MORRISON

It’s a well-established truth that one of the greatest indicators of a healthy and functioning democracy is the ability to disseminate accurate and accessible journalism to the general public. And, as midterm elections loom right around the corner, journalism could not be more crucial right now: the continuation of democratic backsliding, economic turmoil and deep political divisions are some of our most obvious challenges as a country. On the surface, not much is different from the American political landscape of the ’60s and ’70s. And yet, in living rooms and handheld devices across the country, our reality is much more stark: whether a fact is in fact a fact is being contested, misinformation runs rampant and common ideals such as democracy, citizenry and voting have become foundations for contentious debate.

In times such as these, I am always inclined to read from my favorite journalists and publications. Their voices are often a guiding light in a sea of noise, shaping and capturing the zeitgeist of the moment. But, given the amount of unprecedented conflict that surrounds us, I am often left questioning whether or not the institution of journalism can last in a way that’s sustainable. Newsrooms are shutting down across the country, social media has disrupted the ethics of storytelling and if the truth isn’t convincing enough, there is a conspiracy theory or flatout lie waiting in the shadows — and often in broad daylight — to take its place.

To get an idea of what lies ahead for the future of journalism and what role we as students play in amplifying and supporting the free press, I sat down with a couple of KnightWallace Fellows: Meg Martin and Masrat Zahra. Martin is a freelance editor with a storied career in local journalism and Zahra is a decorated Kashmiri photojournalist covering human rights, war and the voices of marginalized communities. These are accomplished storytellers and story shapers who spent a year at the University of Michigan pursuing ambitious projects in the field. After my conversation with these fellows, I walked away with three forwardfacing solutions for the future of journalism.

One: journalism needs new allies — and college students are uniquely poised to step into this role. Two, “objectivity” in journalism has to die. The future

of our democracy depends on it.

Finally, journalism may not be able to heal our deep divisions, but it could be the place we lay down our arms.

Increasingly, more people receive their news in shortform content and sound bites than in traditional long-form media. And while short-form content isn’t new, platforms such as TikTok, Twitter and Facebook are. These days anyone can publish information or cover an event without the traditional frameworks and ethical conduct of an established newsroom. And while that poses numerous threats, Zahra argues this also poses many opportunities, particularly for engagement.

Zahra credits the eponymous hashtag for how quickly news about Mahsa Amini’s death was able to circulate around the globe.

Zahra told me that “without social media, this story risked being silenced. These mediums are incredibly powerful for both journalists and engagement and we can use them to create awareness around issues we care about.”

Who better to be good stewards of information in the digital, sound-bite age than university students? Think about it: We largely occupy the social media spaces of the internet, and at the same time, because of our time in college, we have myriad tools to question and critique media and information. Where are things being sourced? Is a certain voice an authority on the topic?

Is the data accurate?

“Students can be the connective tissue between short-form and social media content and traditional long-form content,” Martin said.

Because so much of what we produce and engage with in universities exists under a code of ethics where we constantly have to verify our sources and present fact-sounding arguments, college students have an amazing role to play as smart, critically-thinking consumers and sharers of news. Because we navigate both of these spaces, we can take what we know about accountability,

verification, reliabWility and accuracy, and bring that level of thoughtfulness to social platforms.

When Watergate unfolded across TV screens, there wasn’t a dedicated news channel or radio station reporting on mistruths. Nixon had his supporters and his dissenters, but ultimately the political processes and investigations that played out weren’t interfered with, the president resigned and Gerald R. Ford took his place in the Oval Office. Today, news and media platforms not only spread mistruths, but they also give a wider audience to people in power spreading false information. Journalists must start taking a stand on what they choose to amplify and publish.

The biggest critique of this proposal is that journalism should be neutral and give equal attention to both sides regardless of ideology. The reality is that some, including prominent Canadian journalist Candis Callison, considerity objectivity to be “the view from nowhere.” All news asserts a position — even news that feels harmless. Take a recent headline from a New York Times article: “Lots of Food Gets Tossed. These Apps Let You Buy It Cheap.” The editor isn’t simply reporting on a food app; they are staking out the position that food waste is bad, and there is something being done about it that we should all know about.

“Journalists can’t just be mouthpieces for the government or the powerful,” Zahra said. “They should strive to share what’s right and what’s truthful.” And, in order to do this, journalists must take a stand. This should matter to all of us as consumers of media. What we read is not just a reflection of the world around us, it is also a reflection and a molding of public opinion. We are what we read, after all, and our identities and values are deeply tied to the stories that are amplified by the media.

Design By Kate Shen

CSG should rethink its role: A case for narrower priorities

NIKHIL SHARMA Opinion Columnist

One of the most storied institutions at the University of Michigan is the Central Student Government. First founded under a different name in 1906, CSG has overseen immense change at the University, advocating for student rights, serving at the forefront of student activism and shaping campus life. In the past century, CSG has coordinated Vietnam War protests at the University, established the Statement of Student Rights and Responsibilities, created the fall study break and pushed for desegregation.

Despite the power it has historically wielded, however, CSG is now a mostly ignored organization that has fallen in prominence.

In the last election, the majority of those elected to CSG received under 50 votes, with many receiving totals in the single digits. Turnout was low across the board, including in LSA, which saw 1,264 votes from its 18,322 undergraduate population.

Despite the low turnout, CSG still controls an immense annual budget of around $800,000, giving it the potential power to shape the U-M community and have a significant

impact on students. With student body participation and investment near historic lows, however, it’s worth examining the current priorities and structure of CSG to understand what is and isn’t working and how CSG can once again connect with U-M students.

Perhaps the most important question to ask when evaluating CSG is what role it should play at the University. At other large public institutions like UC Berkeley and UCLA, student government has historically had a large voice on campus, with the UC Board of Regents having a much smaller soapbox when compared to our active regents. At the UCs, executive administration is the only other major campus voice that their student governments must contend with. As opposed to other colleges, which face a power structure centered around university administration, the University of Michigan has a unique distribution of authority.

Both the Board of Regents and U-M executives play significant roles on campus, often working at odds with one another. With this diffuse power structure, it is harder for CSG to negotiate on behalf of students; it is more difficult to negotiate with nine agents (eight regents and the president) than just one. Because of

this, CSG’s primary opportunity for influence lies in improving the day-today lives of students in powerful yet inexpensive ways that are overlooked by the broader administration.

In the past few years, CSG has made strong contributions to student life through programs like AirBus, free news subscriptions, an emerging test prep program and high spending on student organization funding. An area where they have mostly failed, however, is activist attempts to influence politics. Today, CSG devotes a significant amount of its time and resources towards commissions that focus on activist efforts, with their most recent budget allocating $2,500 to the Clean Campus Commission and the fall 2021 budget appropriating $5,000 to a COVID-19 POC Impact Task Force and $10,000 towards grants for organizations involved in anti-racism projects.

While those are all good causes, CSG’s lack of a focused agenda has ultimately led to high spending and significant manpower devoted to programs with few tangible outcomes. With the U-M Regents and University administration’s outsize influence on campus, CSG faces steep obstacles that make the success of their initiatives virtually impossible.

Haakenson game-winner helps Michigan defeat Minnesot a

ZACH EDWARDS For The Daily

The last time the Michigan women’s soccer team won at Minnesota was in 2012. Enter ing Minneapolis, the Wolverines looked to improve upon their already stellar away record and capture an elusive first win in Big Ten play.

On Thursday night, Michi gan did just that. The Wolver ines (6-4-2 overall, 1-2-1 Big Ten) defeated the Golden Gophers (5-6-1, 1-3-0) 1-0, in a 65th minute goal.

Graduate midfielder Meredith Haakenson was born and raised in Maple Grove, Minnesota, only a 20 minute drive from the Uni versity of Minnesota. Thursday night was her first time back playing in her home state and she delivered, scoring Michigan’s only goal.

The Wolverines looked strong, controlling possession through out the first half. Michigan’s domination of possession and stellar passing ability in the first

half allowed it to have five shots on target. But the Wolverines were unable to put any in the back of the net.

Michigan coach Jen Klein talked about how, from the start, possession was imperative if her team was to break down the Golden Gopher defense.

“Positioning of players allowed us to have good support options, play players to a particular foot to create opportunities and break (Minnesota’s) lines of pressure,” Klein said.

Although the Wolverines held the majority of the time of pos session, one main factor in Michi gan’s lack of goal scoring success was Minnesota’s goalkeeper Megan Plaschko as she made five remarkable saves in the first half alone.

“A lot of credit to their goal keeper she did a fantastic job the whole game,” Klein said. “She did a great job of keeping them in the game.”

Moving into the second half, Michigan stuck to its game plan of holding possession and mak ing smart passes. Junior defend

er Sarah Bridenstine crossed the ball while being covered by two defenders for a slight redi rect from Haakenson to put the Wolverines ahead. The contin ued pressure and opportunities allowed Michigan to score the

Wolverines roll past Ball State as defense shines

SAMUEL MOELIS For The Daily

Coming off a 4-1 win against Big Ten rival Rutgers, the No. 8 Michigan field hockey team (6-4 overall, 1-2 Big Ten) looked to keep the momentum roll ing in its final non-conference game of the season against Ball State (5-5) on Sunday. Firing on all cylinders, the Wolverines sailed past the Cardinals, 7-0.

“One thing we’ve really been working on is just building off of each other and building our momentum throughout the game,” sophomore midfielder Abby Tamer said.

Michigan built that momen tum quickly and built on it often. Within the first minute of play, the Wolverines drew two penalty corners leading to three shots. But while it couldn’t convert either, Michi gan continued to apply pres sure on Ball State.

Finally, that pressure reached a tipping point, as Tamer slammed home the third corner of the period from the top of the circle — her first of two on the afternoon. By the

end of the period, Michigan outshot Ball State 10-0, tilting the field in its favor.

“Personally, it’s nice to get in on corners and get goals pro duced,” Tamer said. “But it’s on everyone to earn those cor ners.”

The Wolverines kept their foot on the gas, recording seven shots in the first three minutes of the second period.

Junior midfielder Lora Clarke shined throughout the period, tallying two goals with in four minutes — the latter of which came off one of the many failed clearing attempts by the Cardinals. At the half Michigan led by three, and Ball State had yet to register a shot.

Looking to seal the game, the Wolverines came out of the half on a mission, adding two goals in the first three minutes of play. The Cardinals struggled to find an answer, failing to slow Michigan’s offensive onslaught as it tacked on two final goals to stretch the lead to seven.

“To see the goals start to fall is good for our team, for our team morale and for our for wards to just be putting balls in the back of the net,” Tamer

said.

Throughout the game, the Wolverine defense was stel lar. Each time Ball State pos sessed the ball in search of a breakout Michigan had at least two players there to swarm to the ball. This made it very challenging for an already struggling Cardinals to create any sort of offense. The lone shot allowed came in the final minute of play and wasn’t even directed at the net.

“That was another point of emphasis, to play a clean game defensively,” Michigan coach Marcia Pankratz said. “It’s tough to hold for the whole sixty minutes.”

Especially in a game where Michigan led the whole time, staying focused and keep ing the pressure on can be challenging. By remaining engaged for a full sixty min utes, the Wolverines were able to finish strong against Ball State.

With its sights set on the tough conference schedule that lies ahead, a dominating win today goes a long way in terms of building momentum.

deciding goal, sneaking it past Plaschko.

“What we told the team at halftime was to keep doing what we’re doing,” Klein said. “We’re generating opportunities and if we stay committed to it one will

break for us.”

After the goal, the Golden Gophers displayed a sense of urgency to get an equalizer. Min nesota produced three corner kicks, but mustered only one shot on target. The discipline of the

Michigan defense allowed it to contain the ball from entering the box on many occasions and force corner kicks or bad passes.

Klein credited much of the defensive success at the end to a collaborative effort from the backline and the rest of the team.

“We want to make sure we put a full team effort in when it comes to defending. Not only our backline but our entire team gave a great defensive performance as far as working hard and matching their energy,” Klein said. “Min nesota had a lot of good attack ing personalities so we knew we were going to have to step up and be ready to battle to the end.”

Looking forward Michigan will have to continue its success from Minneapolis in terms of chance creation and disciplined defense if it wants to contend in the Big Ten.

“We need to make sure we show up and we work hard every single day. I don’t think there’s any easy game in our league so we first and foremost need to make sure we show up and work hard.”

Michigan shows improved offense in draw against Indiana

CLAUDIA HURST For The Daily

Capitalizing on scoring oppor tunities is one of the most difficult and defining aspects of a soccer match. The sound of the ball hit ting the back of the net is the most memorable part of a game.

But even in a game where the Michigan men’s soccer team con verted on its offensive opportuni ties, it still could not pull off the win.

On Sunday, the Wolverines (3-5-3 overall, 1-2-1 Big Ten) tied Indiana (4-2-3, 1-1-2), 2-2, in Michigan’s first home game of Big Ten play.

It was obvious in the first five minutes of Sunday’s game that the Wolverines arrived at the field ready to play. Michigan was intercepting passes, making quick touches, and controlling the ball movement throughout the entire field.

“I was very demanding of a response off of a disappointing response from Tuesday,” Michi gan coach Chaka Daley said. “We are better than our record has shown to this point.”

The Wolverines rebounded

from their difficult week with a unified offensive performance. Michigan’s energy was set in the second minute with its first shot on goal, from senior midfielder Inaki Rodriguez, and that energy stayed consistent throughout the game.

“We need to continue to com pete the right way and show great energy and spirit which I think we started the game with and that carries through the whole game,” Daley said.

In the 19th minute, Rodri guez switched the point of the attack for junior midfielder Bryce Blevins to cross the ball from the left flank. Indiana’s goalkeeper JT Harms left his six-yard box to tip the ball, but once he was out of position, sophomore defender Jason Bucknor ripped the loose ball into the goal to make the score 1-0.

Michigan’s energy only inten sified after its first goal. As the Wolverines dominated in the first half, they appeared connected in their passing game. The experi enced junior and senior midfield ers played in the center of the field with ease.

As the second half began though, the momentum started

to shift.

Indiana tied the game in the 64th minute by continuously moving the ball throughout the field, concluding in a short pass to forward Tommy Mihalic, who shot the ball outside of the Michigan goalkeeper’s reach.

But the battle was far from over.

The Wolverines immediately rebounded with a goal of their own, taking the lead again. Mid field graduate student Kevin Buca crossed the ball to senior midfielder Cameron Martin in the 65th minute.

However, depleting momen tum, the Hoosiers’ defender Daniel Munie tied the game after a ball stayed in front of the Michigan goal for too long late in the 81st minute.

“I think they need to see the result,” Daley said. “Our group is disappointed, which is a good thing.”

The Wolverines showed a lot of resolve in their play on Sun day, but still couldn’t get the result.

The next step for the team is to use the disappointment from another unwanted result, and let it fuel a motivated response.

Michigan wheelchair basketball hosts its second annual Wolverine Invitational

TASMIA JAMIL

The Daily

After qualifying for the NWBA national championship in its debut season, the Michi gan wheelchair basketball team returned to action at the Wol verine Invitational, losing all four of its matchups in a lack luster weekend.

The Wolverines hosted the Detroit Wheelchair Pistons, the Variety Village Rolling Rebel, the Brampton Crashers and the LSWR Hawks at the three-day meet this past weekend at St. Clair County Community Col lege in Port Huron. With the addition of five new players to

the roster, Michigan struggled to replicate last year’s domi nance.

“You can’t win them all,” Michigan Coach Jessica Wynne said. “But in every game, we grew. … It’s a building block for what we’re going to do next.”

In their first game, the Wol verines were pitted against Brampton. From the open ing possession, the absence of team chemistry was evident.

The early turnovers and missed defensive rotations allowed the Crashers to convert in transi tion, and Michigan found itself down by 13 points at the half.

The Wolverines entered the second half with increased defensive intensity, applying

full-court pressure on Bramp ton, but the dominant per formances by Crasher guards Puisand Lai and Tamara Steeves led to a comfortable 59-39 Brampton win.

Michigan’s energy was unhindered as it faced LSWR on Saturday. The Wolverines fought for every loose ball and forced turnovers early in the game. While Michigan gener ated good shots, the momentum shifted in the Hawks’ favor and the team quickly found itself trailing by eight points heading into the half.

The Wolverine offense — led by first-year guard Erik Robeznieks and second-year guard Kevin Konfara — sparked

a glimmer of hope late into the game, but they were unable to get stops on the defensive end, ultimately falling to the Hawks 69-54.

With the adrenaline still pumping, Michigan was imme diately whisked into its next game against the Variety Vil lage. The Rebels, playing their first game of the tournament, controlled the game from the tipoff. The fatigued Wolverines failed to contain the Variety Village’s offense, struggling to a 57-32 loss.

Regardless of the early losses in the tournament, the team remained optimistic heading into its final game of the week end against its Division II rival,

Detroit Wheelchair.

“Every game we played, we got better,” Konfara said. “Our goal is to just get better each time we get out there.”

The Pistons were the high est-ranked team Michigan encountered in the tourna ment, and they were up for the challenge. After a grueling and physical game, second-year forward Alex Saleh and Kon fara gave the Wolverines their first halftime lead in the tour nament.

It appeared as if Michigan was going to have a solid defen sive performance, too. The Wolverines showed improved chemistry, trusting each other every possession down and

rotating smoothly on defense at the half. After that, however, the remainder of the game was all Detroit. Michigan failed to keep pace with the Pistons’ shooting, ending the tourna ment on a 61-51 loss.

Although the tournament came to a close early for the Wolverines, its outcome hasn’t shaken the championship aspiration of the team. The community support at the invi tational reaffirmed Michigan’s confidence in the U-M Adap tive Sports program.

“The main thing is that we’re making history,” Wynne said. “Everything that we’re doing is something bigger than just basketball.”

FIELD HOCKEY

SYDNEY HASTINGS-WILKINS/Daily

Meredith Haakenson

a game-winner

MEN’S SOCCER

ANNA FUDER/Daily

SYDNEY HASTINGS-WILKINS/Daily

Despite converting on multiple offensive chances, Michigan still could not pull off a win against Indiana.

A PhD in hockey: The education of Brandon Naurato

CHARLIE PAPPALARDO Daily Sports Writer

If you get Brandon Naurato talk ing for long enough about his life in hockey, he’ll consistently remark, half-jokingly and half dead serious, “I really did get a PhD. in hockey.”

And while Naurato — Michi gan’s new interim head coach — may not have had to spend seven years in a graduate school or defend a 300 page thesis, the sentiment of his statement rings true for many.

With decades of playing, coach ing and even commercializing his knowledge of the sport, Naurato must have genuinely obtained the highest form of education, one that now allows him to teach.

But while Naurato enters his new role with a plethora of junior, collegiate and NHL experience, it’d be frankly wrong to call his coach ing path stereotypical. Because in many ways, Naurato is an NCAA anomaly.

At 37, Naurato is younger than all but three D1 hockey coaches. With only one year of experience as an assistant coach and only seven years removed from his

first professional coaching gig, he takes the helm far greener than most who spend years or decades as an assistant before finally get ting their chance. And more gener ally, his laid back disposition, cool demeanor and quirky mannerisms more closely resemble those of a surfer dude than those of a coach at a historic hockey powerhouse.

While Naurato seems to be well aware of this, he really doesn’t appear to be deterred by it. He knows that he’s a young coach with limited experience coming into a turbulent situation. And he knows that incredibly high expectations have been placed on his shoulders. But he’s embracing all of these dis tinctions.

“I know who I am,” Naurato said. “I’m not trying to be some one new because I have a new title.

I know exactly who I am, and I’m just trying to show everyone who doesn’t yet.”

Who Naurato is within this new role is a much larger question. Yes, he’s a Michigan native, a UM grad uate and someone who has spent his life around ice rinks; but that’s purely biographical. To under stand who Naurato is as a coach

is not learning where he has been or who he’s been there with, but rather what he learned from being there.

***

Following three years of postcollegiate minor league play, Nau rato called it quits on his playing career, but quickly transitioned to enterprising in the hockey world.

With his own consulting company, along with Total Package Hockey in Detroit, Naurato got his foot in the door of player development for the first time. But it was also dur ing this period where Naurato’s understanding of game dynam ics was born, and he crafted his own development model from this understanding.

“It started when I was back at Total Package Hockey,” Nau rato told College Hockey News. “I started watching all individual players and like what skills they were using to create space or take it away. Then … I woke up every day at 5a.m.. like eight years ago, and I started manually tracking how goals were scored … And once you do that, and you watch 7,000 goals a year for several years in a row, you start seeing trends and you come

up with your own thought process, and you try things.”

It seems that this experience was the genesis for a lot of who Naurato would become behind the bench. While former head coach Mel Pearson preferred operating off of whiteboards and hockey knowledge, Naurato is data obsessed.

“If you called him up right now and asked him how many goals in the NHL are scored off the rush, he’d know exactly what percent age,” former Michigan defense man Nick Blankenberg told MLive last year.

Naurato’s understanding of the game is borne from data and film. That’s why he’s always excited to announce just how many new members of the analytics team he’s hired — 13 — and what innovations they’ll be using to analyze games.

“We’re building multiple plat forms,” Naurato told The Daily. “Is it gonna turn into wins or help us?

I think so, but we’ve got a plan with what we want to do, and then that’s how we fact check if we’re doing things the right way and where we can be better and what to work on.”

Part of Naurato’s confidence

in this calculated and data driven understanding of the game comes from the fact that this sort of analysis is exactly what brought him his first NHL opportunity. He made a name for himself with a player development style crafted out of his analytics, and the Red Wings took note, adding him as a player development coach in 2018.

It was in Detroit where Naurato’s understanding of the game grew further.

“He kind of took an approach where he embedded himself with our staff, so he wasn’t just a skills coach,” former Detroit Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill told The Daily. “So he was in all of our daily meet ings. In those meetings you end up talking lots about philosophy, you end up talking lots about struc ture, how you implement, how you get better.”

And it clearly impacted Nau rato.

“Just being in that war room every day without feeling the pressure of the wins and losses,” Naurato said. “Seeing what works, what doesn’t, what adjustments are made, … it just goes back into your core beliefs.”

But it wasn’t just knowledge of X’s and O’s that Naurato took from Detroit, he saw first hand how a coaching staff puts it all together. From skill training, to condition ing, to even off ice player manage ment. It was in those war rooms in Detroit where the image of how to be a coach came into clearer focus.

“You know, I think a lot of what he had done up until that point was kind of from a micro approach,” Blashill said. “And I think prob ably his time in Detroit helped him with the macro, the bigger team picture.”

***

When Naurato talks about his career, he discusses each destina tion like it was leading to the next. His collegiate career was what made it possible to be a develop ment coach. His time with Total Package gave him the technical and analytical understanding to work for the Red Wings. And his time in Blashill’s “war room” shaped the philosophy that he car ries today behind the Wolverines’ bench.

“Every coach’s route is differ ent,” Blashill said. “And he took a different route, but probably most importantly, he learned along the way. And I’m sure he’s ready to apply those lessons this year.”

This is the highest point of Naurato’s relatively young career. But whether it’s a short-lived high water mark, or the start of some thing much bigger, is still up in the air. And Naurato’s well aware of this fact.

“I’ve got this interim tag, and I don’t think about it much,” Nau rato said. “But I’m thinking about proving it this year.”

If he’s going to prove himself, he’ll have to rely on the educa tion he’s received up to this point. But there’s a difference between education and implementation. If Naurato learned more about how to be a head coach at every level, now is the time to actually put everything into practice.

Everything Naurato says he’s learned from his education in hockey is going to have to imme diately be put into use. Not just the analytics, or coaching philosophy, or people management — but all of it at once.

He’s spent decades in the game, and he’s taken on each subsequent level by modeling, researching and analyzing like a student working towards their degree. And from that perspective, with the chance to demonstrate every thing he’s learned, this year is his thesis.Michigan coach Brandon Naurato’s hockey education is what makes him a unique young coach.

Connor Earegood: Brandon Naurato marks a new era

Brandon Naurato has his eyes locked on the future.

As he hunched over a computer last Tuesday field ing preseason questions from a Zoom panel of reporters, the Michigan interim hockey coach listed his changes to the program — some already made, others a work in prog ress.

Many of those plans excited him. His voice picked up pace when he described his new CPR — creativity, predictabil ity, responsibility — offensive system. He gushed about the skill of his players, freshmen and upperclassmen alike. He even addressed the elephant in the room, the team’s cul ture, when asked about how players are changing its land scape.

But when pressed about this summer’s WilmerHale report — which detailed toxic cul ture within the team and led

to the firing of former coach Mel Pearson — Naurato’s patience grew thinner. After clarifying a question about applying takeaways from the report’s findings, his answer took an unexpected path.

“Everything’s been great here,” Naurato said. “I’m focusing on the future.”

That might seem like an inappropriate answer con sidering the details of that report. I’ll admit, even I was taken aback by its blunt ness; but, upon reflection, it’s entirely fair. Naurato can

only control his own tenure as head coach — interim or not — and those close to the program suggest it’s a night and day difference from the past. Under his watch, it’s a welcome fresh start.

Brandon Naurato isn’t Mel Pearson. And I believe his tenure shouldn’t be defined by his predecessor’s sins.

Through 68 pages of the WilmerHale report, Naura to’s name never comes up. He wasn’t grilled by investiga tors, and none of the allega tions bear his name. Naurato joined Michigan as an assis tant coach under Pearson in August 2021, after most of the investigated misconduct had already occurred.

While it’s unknown what happened inside the program last season, Naurato’s reputa tion is clean right now, and there’s no reason to besmirch it because of the egregious conduct of his former boss.

Yet Naurato does have to solve those pressing issues within the program. And thus far, he has made a concerted effort to do so. He isn’t oblivi ous to the challenges facing the Wolverines this season; he has faced them head on the past two months.

After all, he was the one who put together the pro gram’s pieces in an abridged offseason, installing his sys tems and hiring his coaching staff — notably adding staff ers whose past work included hockey culture. All that is to say, the requisite nuts and bolts to compete on the ice are in working order.

But the real battle goes beyond that. It comes in

repairing the culture of Michigan hockey, building a safe space for players and staff to do their jobs well. As the leader of the program, it’s on Naurato to instill that change.

“Everyone’s coming to you every day, from all areas of people involved in the pro gram, for you to make a deci sion,” Naurato said. “We have so many great people here in Michigan and so many great resources. I’m trying to empower these people to be able to do what they love to do and do their job and sup port them.”

So far, Naurato has accom plished that task. Under his catchphrase “Good Dudes Only,” Naurato is encourag ing his players to not only act right themselves, but to hold each other accountable for their behavior.

Nowhere did the report list problems caused by players in the lock er room, yet the scope of Nau rato’s culture reset includes them. That scope matters considering how much the culture needed to change; from the top down, Naurato wants to ensure his program is in good shape.

As it embarks on a new era, that accountability matters more than ever, and Pearson’s issues shouldn’t hover over Naurato in the meantime. That blame hangs on the administrators and athletic department officials who let it slide for too long.

Not Naurato.

But while Naurato might not have caused the Wolver ines’ problems, he still needs to fix them. He must not only

repair the social mechanisms behind the scenes, but also the outward image of the program. Already, he’s saying the right things to do both.

“There’s always good teaching points, but zero neg atives,” Naurato said after Saturday’s exhibition win over Windsor. “We’re trying to build a safe environment where these guys can fail for ward.”

So while it might be easy to view Naurato’s program with hesitancy, to question every move he makes with Michigan’s Pearson-dam aged image in mind — don’t. Nothing Naurato has done deserves that level of scru tiny yet, and he can only be judged by his own actions.

Under a first-year coach with a dozen first-year play ers, Michigan will witness plenty of failure. There will be missed defensive reads and blowout losses, locker room arguments and coach ing disagreements. There will be times when the grow ing pains of a program anew flare up.

But everything so far indi cates that they won’t be the kinds of mistakes that harm people, and that’s the dif ference. This season isn’t a rebuilding year per se, but it’s certainly about more than just winning games. It’s about nursing the culture and rela tionships of Michigan hockey back to health.

And with Naurato running the show, I believe that recov ery can finally take place.

JEREMY WEINE/Daily

‘M’ SURVIVED

KINNICK STADIUM,

Michigan fends off Iowa in Kinnick, 27-14

back to Michigan.”

JARED GREENSPAN Managing Sports Editor

IOWA

CITY – On the turf, deep in the bowels of Kinnick Stadium, surrounded by a striped sea of black and gold, topfive teams often go to die.

There’s a magical quality to Kinnick, an aura that seems to catalyze stunning upsets: Entering Saturday, Iowa had defeated five of the last six topfive opponents that it faced at home, including a then-No. 2 Michigan football team in 2016.

Saturday, the fourth-ranked Wolverines waltzed into Kinnick conscious of its reputation, cognizant of the history. But they bucked the slogan – for a day, at least, Kinnick is where top-five teams survive.

Michigan (5-0 overall, 2-0 Big Ten) staved off the upset-minded Hawkeyes (3-2, 1-1), 27-14, to secure the program’s first win in Iowa City since 2005.

“Great, great feeling of winning and the thrill of victory,” Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh said. “It’ll be a very happy flight

This isn’t a vintage Iowa team, but that doesn’t take away from what the Wolverines accomplished. The Hawkeyes tout a vaunted defense, as the unit allowed just 23 points across the first four games.

On the game’s opening drive, Michigan made a definitive statement. The offense marched down the field for an 11-play, 75-yard drive capped off by graduate receiver Ronnie Bell’s 16-yard touchdown scamper on an end around. Iowa looked hapless; Kinnick felt punctured.

“We did a good job of mixing up the plays, and that’s how you want to start a game,” Harbaugh said. “I thought it was a very impressive drive.”

Iowa’s offense – the worst scoring unit in the Big Ten –looked the part early on. In the first half, the Hawkeyes moved

the ball past midfield only once. Michigan, meanwhile, doubled Iowa’s time of possession and secured a sound 13-0 halftime lead.

The second half began similarly. The Wolverines forced a quick Iowa punt and then steamrolled 67 yards into the endzone on another brutally methodical drive. This one ended in emphatic fashion, with sophomore quarterback J.J. McCarthy scampering away from a blitz and floating a touchdown pass for sophomore running back Donovan Edwards.

Michigan’s 20-0 lead appeared

insurmountable. The crowd, boisterous at kickoff, seemed lifeless.

“We weren’t gonna let up at all,” senior tight end Luke Schoonmaker said. “When you get up like that on a defense like this, you know they won’t be far behind in an environment like this.”

Sure enough, on a dime, everything changed.

Iowa cracked the scoreboard early in the fourth quarter, as running back Kaleb Johnson bounced outside for a twoyard score. Feeding off its reinvigorated fans, the Hawkeyes’

defense forced a three-andout, handing the ball back to a suddenly competent offense.

Kinnick was alive, and so were Iowa’s hopes.

Down 13, the Hawkeyes had a legitimate chance to whittle the deficit to a one possession game.

They stormed to Michigan’s six-yard line, confronted with a pivotal fourth-and-two. But a 13-play, 78-yard drive came to an underwhelming close: Iowa turned the ball over on downs, throwing short of the sticks and dashing dreams of a comeback.

“We faced a little adversity, but we didn’t flinch, we kept punching,” junior edge rusher Jaylen Harrell said. “Keep playing. Next play mentality.”

That mindset helped demoralize Iowa. As the final minutes played out, fans trudged for the exits, black and gold patterns giving way to barren

metal bleachers. Kinnick, silent but for cheers from the Michigan sideline, seemed innocuous, far less daunting – just as the Wolverines intended.

Kinnick is known for upsets as much as its mind games; the visiting locker room is painted light pink, a calculated decision intended to mess with the opposition’s psyche. On the recommendation of graduate cornerback Gemon Green, Michigan players brought out pink towels with them to wave on the sideline, an ode to their temporary home.

“We always want to embrace everything they throw at us,” senior edge rusher Mike Morris said. “They have a pink locker room, thinking that it’s gonna be some type of adversity. I really didn’t notice it until we sat down and someone said it was pink. I liked the color.”

They liked the color, and they liked Kinnick, too. Because on this day, as junior running back Blake Corum staked the dagger with a 20-yard touchdown run, a top-five team lived. Michigan’s ambitions – and undefeated record – are still intact.

But they bucked the slogan – for a day, at least, Kinnick is where top-five teams survive.

Design

Day in the life of twocampus squirrels

BY SARAH STOLAR, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT

The squirrel is a staple of the University of Michigan’s culture. They make their homes in almost every corner of Ann Arbor, causing may hem among themselves and providing entertain ment for the people who walk through the city’s streets and parks each day. I don’t claim to know everything about squirrels, but in applying the findings from research on the psychology of these (in)famous rodents, I can at least sound like I know a thing or two about squirrels and demys tify the lives of our honorary campus mascot.

October had always been Kaia’s favorite month. The fallen leaves crunching underfoot paired with the chill breeze created the ideal setting for the quintessential college experi ence. The outdoors were a loving complement to the mugs of hot coffee, piles of soft sweaters and horror movies that were waiting for her inside her apartment.

Kaia stepped off of South University Avenue and made her way toward her art history class at Angell Hall, stepping through the arch and toward the Diag as hundreds of other students scurried to arrive at their prospective destina tions. It was like a pattern of nature, this migra tion of students leaving from or heading toward a new location 10 minutes before the hour. A pack of swans headed north, limited only by a semesterly class schedule.

Passing by the Shapiro Library, Kaia could see at least six squirrels in her line of vision, though there were likely many more hiding behind trees and under benches within the same area. Fox squirrels, gray squirrels and a couple black squirrels were all visible among the detritus and dwindling grass on the ground.

Their little paws clacked on the pavement and carried them in seemingly random directions as they climbed trees and ran across the parade of undergraduates monopolizing the sidewalks.

Kaia always thought that the Ann Arbor squirrels were cute, if a bit brainless. Last fall, her roommate had even kicked an unlucky, frantic one of these creatures while running in Nichols Arboretum as it darted in front of her on the path.

They were cute, but that did not mean Kaia found them completely endearing, or respect able. Squirrels could be ruthless, mean, erratic — and their scavenging habits involving cam pus trash bins diminished any majestic quality they may have otherwise carried.

In essence: Squirrels were a part of Kaia’s life, sometimes adding dynamic, comedic value or wholesome interactions. But overall, they were just — there. For her and the rest of the some 30,000 students who trek across campus each day. A neutral component of life in Ann Arbor.

As she passed the Block ‘M’ on the Diag, Kaia saw one of these well-known, overweight squir rels of Central Campus nosing its way through a pile of plastic cups and takeout bags on top of one of the trash cans that hug the Diag’s cement benches. Not seeing what it wanted after searching for several seconds, the squirrel jumped down and started sniffing the ground by a tree. Kaia didn’t know what it was think ing, but it seemed determined, in a thoughtless kind of way.

She exhaled a breath out of her nose in a sem blance of a laugh and continued walking toward the doors of Mason Hall. As she stepped in the

Design by Reid Graham

building, she thought: Those dumb squirrels.

***

The stockpile was 46.38 feet away at a 29 degree angle when facing north. Dig approxi mately four inches down, and there will be two walnuts … confirmed! Cache numbers 36 through 39 still need to be checked today. Caches 3, 13 and 20 have been raided by neighboring enemies. Will proceed with operations to claim further terri tory and obtain additional resources. Next step: Infiltrate human waste receptacles and analyze inventory.

Bo had been working this territory since she was a kit, her entire three years of life spent in the same two-mile radius, doing what she could to obtain the resources she needed to live and to ensure she was covered for the long-term. She had a network of treasure troves, storing the most valuable and durable feed she could find at precise locations around the area. Most of these were carefully embedded within root systems surrounding the concrete and brick mass that was ever populated with people. They were always sidestepping the innermost portion of this brick mass, these people, as if something terribly bad would happen if they stepped directly upon it.

A rectangular clearing surrounded by build ings on each side, Bo made her home in a central location of the humans’ habitat, where there was always the possibility of food and plenty of space to spread her resources.

She continued her investigation into the state of her resources. Dig, check, hide was the rhythm of her work. Her two small paws worked in tandem to reveal each store while her mind was 15 steps ahead, thinking of pos

sible threats to her hard-earned belongings and cataloging those she had already deemed secure.

Bo was always prepared, considering each negative outcome that could arise in the future. Hers was a popular territory, and many other squirrels fought for placement within this rich hunting ground. It could be ruthless, but she was not afraid of concocting calculated plans to secure her network and subsistence.

Predators were never too much of a worry due to the sheer volume of people interacting within Bo’s living space. This was one thing they were useful for. Yet, the behaviors of these confounding humans that invaded her home each day — tying pieces of nylon tarp to the trees within which she made her nests, cover ing her scavenging grounds with squares of linen and taunting her with inedible food — introduced further obstacles to days already filled with carefully outlined agendas.

Hunting, storing, measuring, indexing and defending were integral components of the machine that was her existence.

An essential step of this ritual was sifting through the waste receptacles placed on near ly-even intervals at the corners of the concrete rectangle, with additional containers dotting the periphery of the area. The food from these bins was invaluable in late autumn, as the trees no longer grew the nuts she relied upon. Soon, Bo would be thrown into the lethal grip of win ter with few scavenging resources outside of the occasional generosity of a human offering an almond.

BY RILEY HODDER, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT

Content warning: Descriptions of animal abuse, violence, blood, murder and suicide.

Sometimes she daydreamed so intensely she would almost turn into a fog.

Margot was 15. She turned into a fog that day, the day that it happened. A girl had skipped class because her cat died. Margot got to thinking about what would happen if her dog died.

She could feel its soft black and white fur underneath her hands as she twisted its neck, could feel that snap, like the pop of a balloon as you watched somebody squeeze it: terrifying, but satisfying. She could feel the dog writhe, its tail and legs slap against her thighs. She could see its blue eyes staring up at her in fear. Fear that would never fade.

And then she blinked, and she was in her bathroom back at home, washing her hands of something.

The cold water had been the thing to wake her up, its cold touch seducing her back into reality. She wiped her hands on a towel and gazed into the sink. Was that dirt around the rim of the drain?

Her mother cried into her father’s arms that night — their dog had never come home.

The next day, the whole school was talk ing about the “animal serial killer” running rampant through the town. First Madisyn’s cat, next Margot’s dog. By the time the chatter dissolved and people forgot about the whole thing, three more beloved pets were dead, and Margot had to buy one of those pill organizers for her new meds.

***

“And what?” Nick said, chewing the crust of his pizza, wiping his fingers of grease. “You think you killed your dog?”

“I don’t know,” Margot said. “I daydreamed about it. And then he was gone.”

“Yeah, but you daydream about everything,” Nick said. “That doesn’t mean you actually did something.”

She was 25 now and a crime reporter. Nick hadn’t come out to lunch because he wanted to. He came because Margot forgot her brief case. And as her fiancé, there was an expecta tion that he’d bring it to her.

Margot had only brought up the dog — what

was his name again? — because she was ter rified. Nick hated it when she brought up the story and she knew he had stopped listening at this point. But she was scared because there was a serial killer on the loose in their town, slaughtering victims meaninglessly and mer cilessly. Scared because she was wasting hours of each day sunk in her daydreams.

Daydreams that had consumed her, just like they had when she was 15.

“But I daydreamed about it the day that it happened,” Margot said.

“Did you daydream about the other ani mals?” Nick said. His brows were furrowed at the center of his forehead, creating lines across his face that made him look older.

“Well, no—”

Red Water, Clear Water Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

My friend Rina is a real estate agent. Her retouched face stares at me from billboards at several intersections in the city; next to her right cheekbone is text that reads, “#1 Realtor in the Metro Area and the Lakeshore!” followed by a regal, cursive logo.

Today, though, I am seeing her face in person. We have agreed to meet at a coffee shop at a strip mall midway between our two houses. It’s been a while: she is always busy posing in a pantsuit

next to a waterfall marble countertop.

I arrive at the cafe a few minutes before 10 and walk in the front door after parking my car. Rina is nowhere in sight, so I sit in an armchair by the window to keep lookout while scrolling through content on my phone. A video of an attractive man using a watermelon as percussion finishes playing onscreen as I hear the muffler of a motorcycle veer into the parking lot.

It’s Rina, adorned in a blue sweater and an ath

“Then it wasn’t you. Just a coincidence,” Nick said. “You couldn’t hurt a fly.”

“That’s not very nice,” Margot said.

“What?” Nick laughed. “You can barely make it to work. You think you could actually carry out a murder?”

He seemed to think this was funny. Margot felt like she had swallowed worms, and they were writhing in her stomach.

“Nick.”

“What? You want me to believe you were once some sort of bloodthirsty killer?”

“I want you to believe in something I have to say.”

Nick didn’t go up to the office, just kissed her cheek and left straight from the pizza par lor. Margot went into the lobby and got into the elevator. Just as the doors were shutting, her editor, Amy, slipped inside.

BY OSCAR NOLLETTE-PATULSKI, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT

leisure bottom, straddling the leather seat. She parks, dismounts, pats her pockets and walks in through the glass front doors while checking her texts. Her low-heeled boots on the concrete floor of the cafe are metronomic; after a few beats she looks up from her phone.

Rina holds her arms out as she walks toward me and rotates her wrists back and forth, jazzed.

“Sara! It’s so good to see you,” she says. I hold out my arms and we embrace. With my nose over her shoulder I expect to smell the min gling scents of a department store perfume sec tion, but instead I’m greeted by something more focused and leafy: amplified salad.

“It’s really nice to see you, Rina. It’s been a while,” I say. “What are you wearing? You smell good.”

“Oh, that! It’s my new lemongrass serum,” Rina says. “I’m all natural now. Well, my cosmet ics are.”

The last time I saw Rina, and all of the times before that, natural was the antithesis of her appearance. We met as new reporters for the Gazette, but her posture, pasted smile and the neutral sleeveless dresses she wore to the news room suggested she had higher ambitions. She wanted the sense of celebrity that an endnote reporting credit couldn’t deliver.

“What’s with the new look?” I ask, referring to the lack of pantsuit. “You don’t look much like your billboard.” It’s like someone turned her lip

stick saturation down using a photo editor.

“Well, Sara. It’s all a part of my new motto: simplify, simplify, simplify.” Rina sounds like the author of a self-help book. “Have you heard of Marie Kondo?”

I think about the digital culture article I wrote on Kondo back when she became popular. I start to say “yes,” but Rina cuts me off and teaches me about how to tell if something sparks joy or not.

“Coffee would spark joy for me right now.” I put on a flat smile.

“I see you’ve finally gotten good at segues.” Rina’s words prick my ego. She leads us toward the ordering counter; I look up at the long chalk board menus attached to the wall trying to deci pher drink names like “Raspberry Sunset” and “Zebra Zappuccino.”

Rina orders quickly, and at first I think she’s been here before. “Medium coffee, black.” She hands the cashier her card.

“Rina Stone!” The clerk looks up from the reg ister. “I see your billboard on the way here every morning!”

“Well, it’s quite nice to know I’m noticed.” Rina stabilizes an elated smile she can’t quite contain. “And you are,” she pauses to read, “Car son, hmm. One of my exes was named that, but now I just refer to him as Carcinogen. What a name. Ew.”

Design by Kate Shen

Carter’s Four Rules For Being a Ghost

BY DANIELLE CANAN, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT

Rule One:

The instant I open my eyes I start to disap pear.

It’s a pull that starts in the tips of my extrem ities and starts spreading me apart like I’m ink diffusing into water. Something about this new but familiar living room is making my sight blurrier by the second. Blinking rapidly, I leap up from the couch where I was sleeping. All I am is an electric, echoing panic, drowsy under the weight of this invisible pull. I’m becom ing less, and less, and less. I’m suffocating, I’m suffocating, I’m suffocating. Chest heaving, I collapse backward into a wall. My arms flail uncontrollably, the wisps that used to be me, my mortal, tangible form trailing through the air. In my haze, I’m vaguely aware of a lamp caught right in the crossfire of my flailing.

Snap.

I hit the lamp, and the lamplight flickers. Mist coalesces back into the shape of my body and my scribbles of thoughts begin to fall back into legible lines. Somehow, I’m whole again.

I look over to where my right arm should’ve broken my brother’s apartment furniture. The lamp stands planted and absolute on the couch side table, casting a muted hourglass-shaped glow across the ceiling and the floor. The air is still. The night is a deep dark. The rise, fall, rise of my chest slows to a steadier rhythm.

I notice my hand is now translucent. I move my open palm directly through the lamp shade and through the glass bulb. The light stutters as I do so.

Now that I’m able to think, I take in my surroundings. Andy’s one-bedroom is just as messy as it was when I went to sleep. A pizza box sits open on the counter. Grease still shines on the TV remote where our pizza-covered fingers turned the volume up and down on “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.” I couldn’t hear it well enough, but Andy couldn’t risk another noise com plaint from his neighbors. It’s all the same, yet some how wrong.

fog rolled through while I slept, and its muggy moisture now clings to every surface in sight. It’s a new lens that’s dropped over my eyes and I can’t shake it off.

apart seems to have left — what ever the hell that was. There’s still a lingering tingle on my fin

A house for flies

Old houses are difficult to live in. Extreme heat and chill come from bad insulation, par tially due to aging window sills with paintedover handles and shitty screens; summers can be especially problematic. Radiators melt shoe soles and burn curious visitors’ hands in the winter months, but summer’s inescapable heat is easily the worst part of an aging home.

That was why Chloe and Janet kept as many windows open as they did in their tiny abode: roughly 11 of them. (Chloe believed that the north-facing kitchen window was painted shut; Janet believed that Chloe just wasn’t pulling hard enough.) They did not get along, Janet and Chloe.

They met in a Facebook group before their senior year of college, both Looking For Housing As Soon As Possible. After one month as cohabitants and recent graduates, Chloe moved back home and Janet moved to Utah with her boyfriend of three years.

Janet was an Aries sun with a Pisces moon. Chloe thought astrology was for stupid peo ple.

They had nearly nothing in common, and any chance of friendship was ruined by Chloe’s inability to wash her dishes within 48 hours of dirtying them and Janet’s boyfriend living with them for the first four months of their lease. Janet made it a point to never clean Chloe’s dishes and never say anything

gertips, still a magnetism caressing the back of my neck. But every time I swing my hand through this lightbulb, the magnetism disap pears.

I’ve felt panic before, but this time it felt dif ferent. More removed, living more in my head than in my body, and even then it’s like I was watching myself freak out instead of actually feeling it. I should be lightheaded from how heavy I was hyperventilating, but I’m not. There’s a draft in the top of my soft palate

that’s missing — I’m not feel ing that curl of air that pivots at the throat and cools the body from the inside out. My chest rises and falls, but I real ize it’s more out of habit than anything else. Not because it needs to. Not Because ghosts don’t breathe.

ing. I left the room. An older brother is not sup posed to find his younger brother’s corpse on their couch. That’s not something I needed to see. But not even a wall could’ve muffled his surprise.

Andy has always been stronger than me. Whenever I needed a jar opened, it went straight to him. When our parents told me about my heart condition, it was Andy who reassured me I wouldn’t drop dead the second I left the house. Andy was who I went to when the world became too much for me. I never knew what I’d do without him. But now I have to watch him figure out what to do without me.

The first thing Andy did was call our par ents. I’ve never heard him cry before. The sound drew me, or this post-life embodiment of me, back into the room, partly out of disbe lief.

His broad shoulders are shaking. His eyes are squeezed shut. I stand before him, the invisible subject of his sorrow, unsure of how I could possibly help, unable to even attempt any semblance of comfort. So Andy sat inconsol able on the floor, our mom and dad sat on the phone, and I sat across from him, unable to feel the welling up of my own dulled pain as it gave itself away by rolling down my cheeks.

Design by Emma Sortor

Andy found my body that morn

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

BY GISELLE MILLS, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR

about them until they began to overflow. She did clean up the kitchen table, where Chloe often left a mess — crumbs belonged in the trash, not on the table.

During their first semester, Janet’s boy friend liked to watch football in their living room and often yelled at the blaring TV while Chloe studied for her environmental science exams. Even after he moved out, Chloe avoid ed their shared spaces and otherwise looked for any reason to be out of the house.

Their living room remained undecorat ed other than the TV and basic Ikea table — Janet hated Chloe’s retro, slightly torn National Parks posters, and Chloe hated the sickly sweet smell of Janet’s cinnamon swirl and cake batter candles. Chloe’s makeup con stantly took over the counter space in their bathroom and Janet never washed their hand towel.

It’s not that they hated each other, but having nothing to talk about whenever they crossed paths made for some uncomfortable tension. Between the bad windows, dirty dishes and constant, silent annoyance with one another, it was no wonder they regretted signing the lease.

Then they had their bug problem.

One afternoon, a few hours into a workless Saturday in July, Chloe and Janet both hap pened to be home. This did not occur often,

and it never lasted more than an hour. They were both enthusiastically crossing out the calendar days until their lease agreement ended, and Chloe had already packed up half of her room while Janet hid most of her pots and pans in her closet a month prior. She was afraid that Chloe would finally burn them past recognition or use or take them with her when she moved home. Chloe never noticed that they were missing because of her con

sistent use of the same half-washed, left-out kitchen ware. She did, however, notice the giant housefly circling the living room.

“Hey, did you let a fly in?” Chloe called to Janet in the kitchen.

“Why would I?” It was a stupid question, but Janet had probably let it in when she went onto the porch that morning.